LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


MOSES 
THE  CRIME  OF  POVERTY 


BY 

HENRY    GEORGE 


THE  INTERNATIONAL  JOSEPH  PELS  COMMISSION 

122   EAST   37th   STREET 

NEW  YORK,  U.  S.  A. 

1918 


MOSES 


MOSES 


THERE  is  in  modern  thought  a  tendency  to  look  upon 
the  prominent  characters  of  history  as  resultants 
rather  than  as  initiatory  forces.  As  in  an  earlier 
stage  the  irresistible  disposition  is  to  personification,  so 
now  it  is  to  reverse  this  process,  and  to  resolve  into  myths 
mighty  figures  long  enshrined  by  tradition. 

Yet  if  we  try  to  trace  to  their  sources  movements  whose 
perpetuated  impulses  eddy  and  play  in  the  currents  of  our 
times,  we  at  last  reach  the  individual.  It  is  true  that  "in- 
stitutions make  men,"  but  it  is  also  true  that  "in  the  begin- 
nings men  make  institutions." 

In  a  well-known  passage  Macaulay  has  described  the 
impression  made  upon  the  imagination  by  the  antiquity  of 
that  church,  which,  surviving  dynasties  and  empires,  car- 
ries the  mind  back  to  a  time  when  the  smoke  of  sacrifice 
rose  from  the  Pantheon  and  camelopard  and  tiger  bounded 
in  the  Flavian  amphitheatre.  But  there  still  exist  among 
us  observances — transmitted  in  unbroken  succession  from 
father  to  son — that  go  back  to  a  yet  more  remote  past. 
Each  recurring  year  brings  a  day  on  which,  in  every  land, 
there  are  men  who,  gathering  about  them  their  families, 
and  attired  as  if  for  a  journey,  eat  with  solemnity  a  hur- 
ried meal.  Before  the  walls  of  Rome  were  traced,  before 
Homer  sang,  this  feast  was  kept,  and  the  event  to  which  it 
points  was  even  then  centuries  old. 

That  event  signals  the  entrance  upon  the  historic  stage 
of  a  people  on  many  accounts  remarkable — a  people  who, 
though  they  never  founded  a  great  empire  nor  built  a  great 


The  lecture  "Moses"  was  first  delivered  by  Henry  George  in  San 
Francisco,  June,  1878.  The  lecture  was  again  delivered  at  Steinway 
Hall.  New  York,  Nov.  27,  1887.  It  is  the  text  of  the  American  lecture 
that  is  reprinted  in  this  booklet  and  differs  from  the  first  only  in  the 
addition  of  a  few  passages  referring  to  American  conditions. 


8  Moses 

metropolis,  have  exercised  upon  a  large  portion  of  man- 
kind an  influence,  widespread,  potent,  and  continuous;  a 
people  who  have  for  nearly  two  thousand  years  been  with- 
out country  or  organized  nationality,  yet  have  preserved 
their  identity  and  faith  through  all  vicissitudes  of  time  and 
fortune — who  have  been  overthrown,  crushed,  scattered; 
who  have  been  ground,  as  it  were,  to  very  dust,  and  flung 
to  the  four  winds  of  heaven ;  yet  who,  though  thrones  have 
fallen,  and  empires  have  perished,  and  creeds  have 
changed,  and  living  tongues  have  become  dead,  still  exist 
with  a  vitality  seemingly  unimpaired — a  people  who  unite 
the  strangest  contradictions ;  whose  annals  now  blaze  with 
glory,  now  sound  the  depths  of  shame  and  woe. 

The  advent  of  such  a  people  marks  an  epoch  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  world.  But  it  is  not  of  that  advent  so  much  as 
of  the  central  and  colossal  figure  around  which  its  tradi- 
tions cluster  that  I  propose  to  speak. 

Three  great  religions  place  the  leader  of  the  Exodus 
upon  the  highest  plane  they  allot  to  man.  To  Christendom 
and  to  Islam,  as  well  as  to  Judaism,  Moses  is  the  mouth- 
piece and  lawgiver  of  the  Most  High ;  the  medium,  clothed 
with  supernatural  powers,  through  which  the  Divine  Will 
has  spoken.  Yet  this  very  exaltation,  by  raising  him  above 
comparison,  may  prevent  the  real  grandeur  of  the  man 
from  being  seen.  It  is  amid  his  brethren  that  Saul  stands 
taller  and  fairer. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  latest  school  of  Biblical  criti- 
cism asserts  that  the  books  and  legislation  attributed  to 
Moses  are  really  the  product  of  an  age  subsequent  to  that 
of  the  prophets.  Yet  to  this  Moses,  looming  vague  and 
dim,  of  whom  they  can  tell  us  almost  nothing,  they,  too, 
attribute  the  beginning  of  that  growth  which  flowered 
after  centuries  in  the  humanities  of  Jewish  law,  and  in 
the  sublime  conception  of  one  God,  universal  and  eternal, 
the  Almighty  Father;  and  again,  higher  still  and  fairer, 


Moses  6 

culminated  in  that  guiding  star  of  spiritual  light  which 
rested  over  the  stable  of  Bethlehem  in  Judea. 

But  whether  wont  to  look  on  Moses  in  this  way  or  in 
that,  it  may  be  sometimes  worth  our  while  to  take  the  point 
of  view  in  which  all  shades  of  belief  or  disbelief  may  find 
common  ground,  and  accepting  the  main  features  of 
Hebrew  record  and  tradition,  consider  them  in  the  light  of 
history  as  we  know  it,  and  of  human  nature  as  it  shows 
itself  today.  Here  is  a  case  in  which  sacred  history  may 
be  treated  as  we  treat  profane  history  without  any  shock 
to  religious  feeling.  Nor  can  the  keenest  criticism  resolve 
Moses  into  a  myth.  The  fact  of  the  Exodus  presupposes 
such  a  leader. 

To  lead  into  freedom  a  people  long  crushed  by  tyranny ; 
to  discipline  and  order  such  a  mighty  host ;  to  harden  them 
into  fighting  men,  before  whom  warlike  tribes  quailed  and 
walled  cities  went  down ;  to  repress  discontent  and  jealousy 
and  mutiny;  to  combat  reactions  and  reversions;  to  turn 
the  quick,  fierce  flame  of  enthusiasm  to  the  service  of  a 
steady  purpose,  require  some  towering  character — a  char- 
acter blending  in  highest  expression  the  qualities  of  politi- 
cian, patriot,  philosopher,  and  statesman. 

Such  a  character  in  rough  but  strong  outline  the  tradi- 
tion shows  us — the  union  of  the  wisdom  of  the  Egyptians 
with  the  unselfish  devotion  of  the  meekest  of  men.  From 
first  to  last,  in  every  glimpse  we  get,  this  character  is  con- 
sistent with  itself  and  with  the  mighty  work  which  is  its 
monument.  It  is  the  character  of  a  great  mind,  hemmed 
in  by  conditions  and  limitations,  and  working  with  such 
forces  and  materials  as  were  at  hand — accomplishing,  yet 
failing.  Behind  grand  deeds  a  grander  thought.  Behind 
high  performance  the  still  nobler  ideal. 

Egypt  was  the  mould  of  the  Hebrew  nation — the 
matrix,  so  to  speak,  in  which  a  single  family,  or,  at  most, 
a  small  tribe  grew  to  a  people  as  numerous  as  the  Ameri- 


10  Moses 

can  people  at  the  time  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence. 
For  four  centuries,  according  to  Hebrew  tradition — that  is 
to  say,  for  a  period  longer  than  America  has  been  known 
to  Europe — this  growing  people,  coming  a  patriarchal 
family  from  a  roving,  pastoral  life,  had  been  under  the 
dominance  of  a  highly  developed  and  ancient  civilization 
— a  civilization  whose  fixity  is  symbolized  by  monuments 
that  rival  in  endurance  the  everlasting  hills — a  civilization 
so  ancient  that  the  Pyramids,  as  we  now  know,  were  hoary 
with  centuries  ere  Abraham  looked  upon  them. 

No  matter  how  clearly  the  descendants  of  the  kinsmen 
who  came  into  Egypt  at  the  invitation  of  the  boy-slave  be- 
come prime  minister,  maintained  the  distinction  of  race, 
and  the  traditions  of  a  freer  life,  they  must  have  been 
powerfully  affected  by  such  a  civilization;  and  just  as  the 
Hebrews  of  today  are  Polish  in  Poland,  German  in  Ger- 
many, and  American  in  the  United  States,  so,  but  far  more 
clearly  and  strongly,  the  Hebrews  of  the  Exodus  must 
have  bee*n  essentially  Egyptians. 

It  is  not  remarkable,  therefore,  that  the  ancient  He- 
brew institutions  show  in  so  many  points  the  influence  of 
Egyptian  ideas  and  customs.  What  is  remarkable  is  the 
dissimilarity.  To  the  unreflecting,  nothing  may  seem  more 
natural  than  that  a  people,  in  turning  their  backs  upon  a 
land  where  they  had  been  long  oppressed,  should  discard 
its  ideas  and  institutions.  But  the  student  of  history,  the 
observer  of  politics,  knows  that  nothing  is  more  unnatural. 
Habits  of  thought  are  even  more  tyrannous  than  habits  of 
body.  They  make  for  the  masses  of  men  a  mental  atmos- 
phere out  of  which  they  can  no  more  rise  than  out  of  the 
physical  atmosphere.  A  people  long  used  to  despotism 
may  rebel  against  a  tyrant;  they  may  break  his  statutes 
and  repeal  his  laws,  cover  with  odium  that  which  he  loved, 
and  honor  that  which  he  hated;  but  they  will  hasten  to 
set  up  another  tyrant  in  his  place.  A  people  used  to  super- 


Moses  11 

stition  may  embrace  a  purer  faith,  but  it  will  be  only  to 
degrade  it  to  their  old  ideas.  A  people  used  to  persecution 
may  flee  from  it,  but  only  to  persecute  in  their  turn  when 
they  get  power. 

For  "institutions  make  men."  And  when  amid  a  peo- 
ple used  to  institutions  of  one  kind,  we  see  suddenly  arise 
institutions  of  an  opposite  kind,  we  know  that  behind 
them  must  be  that  active,  that  initiative  force — the  men 
who  in  the  beginnings  make  institutions. 

This  is  what  occurs  in  the  Exodus.  The  striking  dif- 
ferences between  Egyptian  and  Hebrew  polity  are  not  of 
form  but  of  essence.  The  tendency  of  the  one  is  to  sub- 
ordination and  oppression ;  of  the  other  to  individual  free- 
dom. Strangest  of  recorded  births  !  From  out  the  strong- 
est and  most  splendid  despotism  of  antiquity  comes  the 
freest  republic.  From  between  the  paws  of  the  rock-hewn 
Sphinx  rises  the  genius  of  human  liberty,  and  the  trum- 
pets of  the  Exodus  throb  with  the  defiant  proclamation  of 
the  rights  of  man. 

Consider  what  Egypt  was.  The  very  grandeur  of  her 
monuments,  that  after  the  lapse,  not  of  centuries,  but  of 
milleniums,  seem  to  say  to  us,  as  the  Egyptian  priests  said 
to  the  boastful  Greeks,  "Ye  are  children !"  testify  to  the 
enslavement  of  the  people — are  the  enduring  witnesses  of 
a  social  organization  that  rested  on  the  masses  an  immov- 
able weight.  That  narrow  Nile  valley,  the  cradle  of  the 
arts  and  sciences,  the  scene,  perhaps,  of  the  greatest  tri- 
umphs of  the  human  mind,  is  also  the  scene  of  its  most 
abject  enslavement.  In  the  long  centuries  of  its  splendor, 
its  lord,  secure  in  the  possession  of  irresistible  temporal 
power,  and  securer  still  in  the  awful  sanctions  of  a  mys- 
tical religion,  was  as  a  god  on  earth,  to  cover  whose  poor 
carcass  with  a  tomb  befitting  his  state  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands toiled  away  their  lives.  For  the  classes  who  came 
next  to  him  were  all  the  sensuous  delights  of  a  most  lux- 


1$  Moses 

urious  civilization,  and  high  intellectual  pleasures  which 
the  mysteries  of  the  temple  hid  from  vulgar  profanation. 
But  for  the  millions  who  constituted  the  base  of  the  social 
pyramid  there  was  but  the  lash  to  stimulate  their  toil,  and 
the  worship  of  beasts  to  satisfy  the  yearnings  of  the  soul. 
From  time  immemorial  to  the  present  day  the  lot  of  the 
Egyptian  peasant  has  been  to  work  and  to  starve  that 
those  above  him  might  live  daintily.  He  has  never  re- 
belled. The  spirit  for  that  was  long  ago  crushed  out  of 
him  by  institutions  which  make  him  what  he  is.  He  knows 
but  to  suffer  and  to  die. 

Imagine  what  opportune  circumstance  we  may,  yet  to 
organize  and  to  carry  on  a  movement  resulting  in  the 
release  of  a  great  people  from  such  soul-subduing  tyranny, 
backed  by  an  army  of  half  a  million  highly  trained  soldiers, 
requires  a  leadership  of  a  most  commanding  and  consum- 
mate genius.  But  this  task,  surpassingly  great  though  it  is, 
is  not  the  measure  of  the  greatness  of  the  leader  of  the 
Exodus.  It  is  not  in  the  deliverance  from  Egypt,  it  is  in 
the  constructive  statesmanship  that  laid  the  foundations  of 
the  Hebrew  commonwealth  that  the  superlative  grandeur 
of  that  leadership  looms  up.  As  we  cannot  imagine  the 
Exodus  without  the  great  leader,  neither  can  we  account 
for  the  Hebrew  polity  without  the  great  statesman.  Not 
merely  intellectually  great,  but  morally  great — a  statesman 
aglow  with  the  unselfish  patriotism  that  refuses  to  grasp 
a  scepter  or  found  a  dynasty. 

The  lessons  of  modern  history,  the  manifestations  of 
human  nature  that  we  behold  around  us,  would  teach  us  to 
see  in  the  essential  divergence  of  the  Hebrew  polity  from 
that  of  Egypt  the  impress  of  a  master  mind,  even  if  Hebrew 
tradition  had  not  testified  both  to  the  influence  of  such  a 
mind,  and  to  the  constant  disposition  of  accustomed  ideas 
to  reassert  themselves  in  the  minds  of  the  people.  Over 
and  over  again  the  murmurings  break  out;  no  sooner  is 


Moses  IS 

the  back  of  Moses  turned  than  the  cry,  "These  be  thy  gods, 
O  Israel !"  announces  the  setting  up  of  the  Egyptian  calf; 
while  the  strength  of  the  monarchial  principle  shows  itself 
in  the  inauguration  of  a  king  as  quickly  as  the  far-reach- 
ing influence  of  the  great  leader  is  somewhat  spent. 

It  matters  not  when  or  by  whom  were  compiled  the 
books  popularly  attributed  to  Moses;  it  matters  not  how 
much  of  the  code  there  given  may  be  the  survivals  of  more 
ancient  usage  or  the  amplifications  of  a  later  age ;  its  great 
features  bear  the  stamp  of  a  mind  far  in  advance  of  peo- 
ple and  time,  of  a  mind  that  beneath  effects  sought  for 
causes,  of  a  mind  that  drifted  not  with  the  tide  of  events 
but  aimed  at  a  definite  purpose. 

The  outlines  that  the  record  gives  us  of  the  character 
of  Moses — the  brief  relations  that  wherever  the  Hebrew 
scriptures  are  read  have  hung  the  chambers  of  the  imag- 
ination with  vivid  pictures — are  in  every  way  consistent 
with  this  idea.  What  we  know  of  the  life  illustrates  what 
we  know  of  the  work.  What  we  know  of  the  work  illum- 
ines the  life. 

It  was  not  an  empire,  such  as  had  reached  full  develop- 
ment in  Egypt  or  existed  in  rudimentary  patriarchal  form 
in  the  tribes  around,  that  Moses  aimed  to  found.  Nor  was 
it  a  republic  where  the  freedom  of  the  citizen  rested  on  the 
servitude  of  the  helot,  and  the  individual  was  sacrificed 
to  the  state.  It  was  a  commonwealth  based  upon  the  indi- 
vidual— a  commonwealth  whose  ideal  it  was  that  every 
man  should  sit  under  his  own  vine  and  fig  tree,  with  none 
to  vex  him  or  make  him  afraid ;  a  commonwealth  in  which 
none  should  be  condemned  to  ceaseless  toil ;  in  which,  for 
even  the  bond  slave,  there  should  be  hope,  in  which,  for  even 
the  beast  of  burden  there  should  be  rest.  A  commonwealth 
in  which,  in  the  absence  of  deep  poverty,  the  manly  virtues 
that  spring  from  personal  independence  should  harden  into 
a  national  character — a  commonwealth  in  which  the  family 


14  Moses 

affections  might  knit  their  tendrils  around  each  member, 
binding  with  links  stronger  than  steel  the  various  parts 
into  the  living  whole. 

It  is  not  the  protection  of  property,  but  the  protection 
of  humanity,  that  is  the  aim  of  the  Mosaic  code.  Its  sanc- 
tions are  not  directed  to  securing  the  strong  in  heaping  up 
wealth  so  much  as  to  preventing  the  weak  from  being 
crowded  to  the  wall.  At  every  point  it  interposes  its  bar- 
riers to  the  selfish  greed  that,  if  left  unchecked,  will  surely 
differentiate  men  into  landlord  and  serf,  capitalist  and 
workman,  millionaire  and  tramp,  ruler  and  ruled.  Its  Sab- 
bath day  and  Sabbath  year  secure,  even  to  the  lowliest,  rest 
and  leisure.  With  the  blast  of  the  jubilee  trumpets  the  slave 
goes  free,  the  debt  that  cannot  be  paid  is  canceled,  and  a 
re-division  of  the  land  secures  again  to  the  poorest  his  fair 
share  in  the  bounty  of  the  common  Creator.  The  reaper 
must  leave  something  for  the  gleaner ;  even  the  ox  cannot 
be  muzzled  as  he  treadeth  out  the  corn.  Everywhere,  in 
everything,  the  dominant  idea  is  that  of  our  homely  phrase 
—"Live  and  let  live !" 

And  the  religion  with  which  this  civil  policy  is  so  close- 
ly intertwined  exhibits  kindred  features from  the  idea 

of  the  brotherhood  of  man  springs  the  idea  of  the  father- 
hood of  God.  Though  the  forms  may  resemble  those  of 
Egypt,  the  spirit  is  that  which  Egypt  had  lost.  Though 
a  hereditary  priesthood  is  retained,  the  law  in  its  fullness 
is  announced  to  all  the  people.  Though  the  Egyptian  rite 
of  circumcision  is  preserved  and  Egyptian  symbols  reap- 
pear in  all  the  externals  of  worship,  the  tendency  to  take 
the  type  for  the  reality  is  sternly  repressed.  It  is  only 
when  we  think  of  the  bulls  and  the  hawks,  of  the  deified 
cats  and  sacred  ichneumons  of  Egypt,  that  we  realize  the 
full  meaning  of  the  command:  "Thou  shalt  not  make  to 
thyself  any  graven  image !" 

And  if  we  seek  beneath  form  and  symbol  and  command 


Moses  15 

the  thought  of  which  they  are  but  the  expression,  we  find 
that  the  great  distinctive  feature  of  the  Hebrew  religion, 
that  which  separates  it  by  such  a  wide  gulf  from  the  re- 
ligions amid  which  it  grew  up,  is  its  utilitarianism,  its  rec- 
ognition of  divine  law  in  human  life.  It  asserts,  not  a  God 
who  is  confined  to  the  far-off  beginning  or  the  vague  fu- 
ture, who  is  over  and  above  and  beyond  men,  but  a  God 
who  in  His  inexorable  law  is  here  and  now ;  a  God  of  the 
living  as  well  as  the  dead;  a  God  of  the  market  place  as 
well  as  of  the  temple;  a  God  whose  judgments  wait  not 
another  world  for  execution,  but  whose  immutable  de- 
crees will,  in  this  life,  give  happiness  to  the  people  that 
heed  them  and  bring  misery  upon  the  people  who  for- 
get them.  Amid  the  forms  of  splendid  degradation  in 
which  a  once  noble  religion  had  in  Egypt  sunk  to  petrifica- 
tion,  amid  a  social  order  in  which  the  divine  justice 
seemed  to  sleep,  I  AM  was  the  truth  that  dawned  upon 
Moses.  And  in  his  desert  contemplation  of  nature's  flux 
and  reflux,  the  death  that  bounds  her  life,  the  life  she 
brings  from  death,  always  consuming  yet  never  consumed 
— I  AM  was  the  message  that  fell  upon  his  inner  ear. 

The  absence  in  the  Mosaic  books  of  any  reference  to 
a  future  life  is  only  intelligible  by  the  prominence  into 
which  the  truth  is  brought.  Nothing  could  have  been  more 
familiar  to  the  Hebrews  of  the  Exodus  than  the  doctrine 
of  immortality.  The  continued  existence  of  the  soul,  the 
judgment  after  death,  the  rewards  and  punishments  of  the 
future  state,  were  the  constant  subjects  of  Egyptian 
thought  and  art.  But  a  truth  may  be  hidden  or  thrown 
into  the  background  by  the  intensity  with  which  another 
truth  is  grasped.  And  the  doctrine  of  immortality, 
springing  as  it  does  from  the  very  depths  of  human 
nature,  ministering  to  aspirations  which  become  stronger 
and  stronger  as  intellectual  life  rises  to  higher  planes 
and  the  life  of  the  affections  becomes  more  intense, 


16  Moses 

may  yet  become  so  incrusted  with  degrading  supersti- 
tions, may  be  turned  by  craft  and  selfishness  into  such 
a  potent  instrument  for  enslavement,  and  so  used  to 
justify  crimes  at  which  every  natural  instinct  revolts, 
that  to  the  earnest  spirit  of  the  social  reformer  it  may 
seem  like  an  agency  of  oppression  to  enchain  the  in- 
tellect and  prevent  true  progress;  a  lying  device  with 
which  the  cunning  fetter  the  credulous. 

The  belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul  must  have  ex- 
isted in  strong  forms  among  the  masses  of  the  Hebrew 
people.  But  the  truth  that  Moses  brought  so  prominently 
forward,  the  truth  his  gaze  was  concentrated  upon,  is  the 
truth  that  has  often  been  thrust  aside  by  the  doctrine  of 
immortality,  and  that  may  perhaps,  at  times,  react  on  it  in 
the  same  way.  This  is  the  truth  that  the  actions  of  men 
bear  fruit  in  this  world,  that  though  on  the  petty  scale  of 
individual  life  wickedness  may  seem  to  go  unpunished  and 
wrong  to  be  rewarded,  there  is  yet  a  Nemesis  that  with 
tireless  feet  and  pitiless  arm  follows  every  national  crime, 
and  smites  the  children  for  the  father's  transgression ;  the 
truth  that  each  individual  must  act  upon  and  be  acted  upon 
by  the  society  of  which  he  is  a  part,  that  all  must  in  some 
degree  suffer  for  the  sin  of  each,  and  the  life  of  each  be 
dominated  by  the  conditions  imposed  by  all.  It  is  the  in- 
tense appreciation  of  this  truth  that  gives  the  Mosaic  in- 
stitutions so  practical  and  utilitarian  a  character.  Their 
genius,  if  I  may  so  speak,  leaves  the  abstract  speculations 
where  thought  so  easily  loses  and  wastes  itself,  or  finds 
expression  only  in  symbols  that  become  finally  but  the 
basis  of  superstition  in  order  that  it  may  concentrate  atten- 
tion upon  the  laws  which  determine  the  happiness  or  mis- 
ery of  men  upon  this  earth.  Its  lessons  have  never  tended 
to  the  essential  selfishness  of  asceticism,  which  is  so  prom- 
inent a  feature  in  Brahminism  and  Buddhism,  and  from 
which  Christianity  and  Islamism  have  not  been  exempt. 


Moses  17 

Its  injunction  has  never  been,  "Leave  the  world  to  itself 
that  you  may  save  your  own  soul,"  but  rather,  "Do  your 
duty  in  the  world  that  you  may  be  happier  and  the  world 
be  better."  It  has  disdained  no  sanitary  regulation  that 
might  secure  the  health  of  the  body.  Its  promise  has  been 
of  peace  and  plenty  and  length  of  days,  of  stalwart  sons 
and  comely  daughters. 

It  may  be  that  the  feeling  of  Moses  in  regard  to  a  fu- 
ture life  was  that  expressed  in  the  language  of  the  Stoic: 
"It  is  the  business  of  Jupiter,  not  mine" ;  or  it  may  be  that 
it  partook  of  the  same  revulsion  that  shows  itself  in  mod- 
ern times,  when  a  spirit  essentially  religious  has  been 
turned  against  the  forms  and  expressions  of  religion,  be- 
cause these  forms  and  expressions  have  been  made  the 
props  and  the  bulwarks  of  tyranny,  and  even  the  name  and 
teachings  of  the  Carpenter's  Son  perverted  into  supports 
of  social  injustice — used  to  guard  the  pomp  of  Caesar  and 
justify  the  greed  of  Dives. 

Yet,  however  such  feelings  influenced  Moses,  I  cannot 
think  that  such  a  soul  as  his,  living  such  a  life  as  his — feel- 
ing the  exaltation  of  great  thoughts,  feeling  the  burden  of 
great  cares,  feeling  the  bitterness  of  great  disappointments 
— did  not  stretch  forward  to  the  hope  beyond ;  did  not  rest 
and  strengthen  and  ground  itself  in  the  confident  belief 
that  the  death  of  the  body  is  but  the  emancipation  of  the 
mind;  did  not  feel  the  assurance  that  there  is  a  power  in 
the  universe  upon  which  it  might  confidently  rely,  through 
wreck  of  matter  and  crash  of  worlds.  Yet  the  great  con- 
cern of  Moses  was  with  the  duty  that  lay  plainly  before 
him;  the  effort  to  lay  the  foundation  of  a  social  state  in 
which  deep  poverty  and  degrading  want  should  be  un- 
known— where  men  released  from  the  meaner  struggles 
that  waste  human  energy  should  have  opportunity  for  in- 
tellectual and  moral  development. 

Here  stands  out  the  greatness  of  the  man.    What  was 


18  Moses 

the  wisdom  and  stretch  of  the  forethought  which  in  the 
desert  sought  to  guard  in  advance  against  the  dangers  of 
a  settled  state,  let  the  present  speak. 

In  the  full  blaze  of  the  nineteenth  century,  when  every 
child  in  our  schools  may  know  of  common  truths  things  of 
which  the  Egyptian  sages  never  dreamed;  when  the  earth 
has  been  mapped  and  the  stars  have  been  weighed;  when 
steam  and  electricity  have  been  pressed  into  our  service, 
and  science  is  wresting  from  nature  secret  after  secret — 
it  is  but  natural  to  look  back  upon  the  wisdom  of  three 
thousand  years  ago  as  the  man  looks  back  upon  the  learn- 
ing of  the  child. 

And  yet  for  all  this  wonderful  increase  in  knowledge, 
for  all  this  enormous  gain  of  productive  power,  where  is 
the  country  in  the  civilized  world  in  which  today  there  is 
not  want  and  suffering — where  the  masses  are  not  con- 
demned to  toil  that  gives  no  leisure,  and  all  classes  are  not 
pursued  by  a  greed  of  gain  that  makes  life  an  ignoble 
struggle  to  get  and  to  keep?  Three  thousand  years  of  ad- 
vance, and  still  the  moan  goes  up:  "They  have  made  our 
lives  bitter  with  hard  bondage,  in  mortar  and  in  brick,  and 
in  all  manner  of  service!"  Three  thousand  years  of  ad- 
vance! and  the  piteous  voices  of  little  children  are  in  the 
moan. 

Standing  as  I  stand,  where  modern  ideas  have  had 
fullest,  freest  development;  in  the  newest  great  city  of  the 
newest  great  nation;  by  the  side  of  that  ultimate  sea, 
where  ends  the  westward  march  of  the  race  that  has  cir- 
cled the  globe,  and  farther  west  meets  farthest  east,  the 
cool  shades  and  sweet  waters  whose  promise  has  so  long 
lured  us  on  seem  dissolving  into  mocking  mirage. 

Over  ocean  wastes  far  wider  than  the  Syrian  desert 
we  have  sought  our  promised  land — no  narrow  strip  be- 
tween the  mountains  and  the  sea,  but  a  wide  and  virgin 
continent.  Here,  in  greater  freedom,  with  vaster  knowl- 


Moses  19 

edge  and  fuller  experience,  we  are  building  up  a  nation 
that  leads  the  van  of  modern  progress. 

And  yet  while  we  prate  of  the  rights  of  man  there  are 
already  among  us  thousands  and  thousands  who  find  it 
difficult  to  assert  the  first  of  natural  rights — the  right  to 
earn  an  honest  living;  thousands  who  from  time  to  time 
must  accept  of  degrading  charity  or  starve. 

We  boast  of  equality  before  the  law;  yet  notoriously 
justice  is  deaf  to  the  call  of  him  who  has  no  gold  and  blind 
to  the  sin  of  him  who  has. 

We  pride  ourselves  upon  our  common  schools ;  yet  after 
our  boys  and  girls  are  educated  we  vainly  ask,  "What  shall 
we  do  with  them?"  And  about  our  colleges  children  are 
growing  up  in  vice  and  crime,  because  from  their  homes 
poverty  has  driven  all  refining  influences. 

We  pin  our  faith  to  universal  suffrage;  yet  with  all 
power  in  the  hands  of  the  people,  the  control  of  public  af- 
fairs is  passing  into  the  hands  of  a  class  of  professional 
politicians,  and  our  governments  are,  in  many  cases,  be- 
coming but  a  means  for  robbery  of  the  people. 

We  have  prohibited  hereditary  distinctions,  we  have 
forbidden  titles  of  nobility ;  yet  there  is  growing  up  among 
us  an  aristocracy  of  wealth  as  powerful  and  merciless  as 
any  that  ever  held  sway. 

We  progress  and  we  progress,  we  girdle  continents 
with  iron  roads  and  knit  cities  together  with  the  mesh  of 
telegraph  wires;  each  day  brings  some  new  invention; 
each  year  marks  a  fresh  advance — the  power  of  produc- 
tion increased,  and  the  avenues  of  exchange  cleared  and 
broadened.  Yet  the  complaint  of  "hard  times"  is  louder 
and  louder,  and  everywhere  are  men  harassed  by  care  and 
haunted  by  the  fear  of  want.  With  swift,  steady  strides 
and  prodigious  leaps,  the  power  of  human  hands  to  satisfy 
human  wants  advances  and  advances,  is  multiplied  and 
multiplied.  Yet  the  struggle  for  mere  existence  is  more 


20  Moses 

and  more  intense,  and  human  labor  is  becoming  the  cheap- 
est of  commodities.  Beside  glutted  warehouses  human 
beings  grow  faint  with  hunger  and  shiver  with  cold ;  under 
the  shadow  of  churches  festers  the  vice  that  is  born  of 
want. 

Trace  to  its  root  the  cause  that  is  thus  producing  want 
in  the  midst  of  plenty,  ignorance  in  the  midst  of  intelli- 
gence, aristocracy  in  democracy,  weakness  in  strength — 
that  is  giving  to  our  civilization  a  one-sided  and  unstable 
development,  and  you  will  find  it  something  which  this 
Hebrew  statesman  three  thousand  years  ago  perceived  and 
guarded  against.  Moses  saw  that  the  real  cause  of  the 
enslavement  of  the  masses  of  Egypt  was  what  has  every- 
where produced  enslavement,  the  possession  by  a  class  of 
the  land  upon  which  and  from  which  the  whole  people  must 
live.  He  saw  that  to  permit  in  the  land  the  same  unqualified 
private  ownership  that  by  natural  right  attaches  to  the 
things  produced  by  labor,  would  be  inevitably  to  separate 
the  people  into  the  very  rich  and  the  very  poor,  inevitably 
to  enslave  labor — to  make  the  few  the  masters  of  the  many, 
no  matter  what  the  political  forms;  to  bring  vice  and 
degradation,  no  matter  what  the  religion. 

And  with  the  foresight  of  the  philosophic  statesman 
who  legislates  not  for  the  need  of  a  day,  but  for  all  the 
future,  he  sought,  in  ways  suited  to  his  times  and  condi- 
tions, to  guard  against  this  error.  Everywhere  in  the 
Mosaic  institutions  is  the  land  treated  as  the  gift  of  the 
Creator  to  His  common  creatures,  which  no  one  has  the 
right  to  monopolize.  Everywhere  it  is,  not  your  estate,  or 
your  property,  not  the  land  which  you  bought,  or  the  land 
which  you  conquered,  but  "the  land  which  the  Lord  thy 
God  giveth  thee" — "the  land  which  the  Lord  lendeth  thee." 
And  by  practical  legislation,  by  regulations  to  which  he 
gave  the  highest  sanctions,  he  tried  to  guard  against  the 
wrong  that  converted  ancient  civilizations  into  despotisms 


Moses  21 

— the  wrong  that  in  after  centuries  ate  out  the  heart  of 
Rome —  that  produced  the  imbruting  serfdom  of  Poland 
and  the  gaunt  misery  of  Ireland,  the  wrong  that  is  already 
filling  American  cities  with  idle  men,  and  our  virgin  states 
with  tramps.  He  not  only  provided  for  the  fair  division 
of  the  land  among  the  people,  and  for  making  it  fallow  and 
common  every  seventh  year,  but  by  the  institution  of  the 
jubilee  he  provided  for  a  re-distribution  of  the  land  every 
fifty  years,  and  made  monopoly  impossible. 

I  do  not  say  that  these  institutions  were,  for  their  ulti- 
mate purpose,  the  very  best  that  might  even  then  have 
been  devised,  for  Moses  had  to  work,  as  all  great  con- 
structive statesmen  have  to  work,  with  the  tools  that  came 
to  his  hand,  and  upon  materials  as  he  found  them.  Still 
less  do  I  mean  to  say  that  forms  suitable  for  that  time  and 
people  are  suitable  for  every  time  and  people.  I  ask  not 
veneration  of  the  form,  but  recognition  of  the  spirit. 

Yet  how  common  it  is  to  venerate  the  form  and  to  deny 
the  spirit.  There  are  many  who  believe  that  the  Mosaic 
institutions  were  literally  dictated  by  the  Almighty,  yet 
who  would  denounce  as  irreligious  and  "communistic"  any 
application  of  their  spirit  to  the  present  day.  And  yet 
today  how  much  we  owe  to  these  institutions !  This  very 
day  the  only  thing  that  stands  between  working  classes  and 
ceaseless  toil  is  one  of  these  Mosaic  institutions.  Nothing 
in  political  economy  is  better  settled  than  that  under  con- 
ditions which  now  prevail  the  working  classes  would  get  no 
more  for  seven  days'  labor  than  they  now  get  for  six,  and 
would  find  it  as  difficult  to  reduce  their  working  hours  as 
now. 

Let  the  mistake  of  those  who  think  that  man  was 
made  for  the  Sabbath,  rather  than  the  Sabbath  for  man, 
be  what  it  may;  that  there  is  one  day  in  the  week  that 
the  working  man  may  call  his  own,  one  day  in  the  week  on 


22  Moses 

which  hammer  is  silent  and  loom  stands  idle,  is  due, 
through  Christianity,  to  Judaism — to  the  code  promulgated 
in  the  Sinaitic  wilderness.  And  who  that  considers  the 
waste  of  productive  forces  can  doubt  that  modern  society 
would  be  not  merely  richer  but  happier,  had  we  received  as 
well  as  the  Sabbath  day  the  grand  idea  of  the  Sabbath  year, 
or  adapting  its  spirit  to  our  changed  conditions,  secured 
in  another  way  an  equivalent  reduction  of  working  hours. 

It  is  in  these  characteristics  of  the  Mosaic  institutions 
that,  as  in  the  fragments  of  a  Colossus,  we  may  read  the 
greatness  of  the  mind  whose  impress  they  bear — of  a 
mind  in  advance  of  its  surroundings,  in  advance  of  its 
age;  of  one  of  those  star  souls  that  dwindle  not  with 
distance,  but,  glowing  with  the  radiance  of  essential 
truth  hold  their  light  while  institutions  and  languages  and 
creeds  change  and  pass. 

That  the  thought  was  greater  than  the  permanent  ex- 
pression it  found,  who  can  doubt?  Yet  from  that  day  to 
this  that  expression  has  been  in  the  world  a  living  power. 

From  the  free  spirit  of  the  Mosaic  law  sprang  the  in- 
tensity of  family  life  that  amid  all  dispersions  and  perse- 
cution has  preserved  the  individuality  of  the  Hebrew  race ; 
that  love  of  independence  that  under  the  most  adverse  cir- 
cumstances has  characterized  the  Jew;  that  burning  pa- 
triotism that  flamed  up  in  the  Maccabees  and  bared  the 
breasts  of  Jewish  peasants  to  the  serried  steel  of  Grecian 
phalanx  and  the  resistless  onset  of  Roman  legion;  that 
stubborn  courage  that  in  exile  and  in  torture  held  the  Jew 
to  his  faith.  It  kindled  that  fire  that  has  made  the  strains 
of  Hebrew  seers  and  poets  phrase  for  us  the  highest  exalta- 
tions of  thought;  that  intellectual  vigor  that  has  over  and 
over  again  made  the  dry  staff  bud  and  blossom.  And  pass- 
ing outward  from  one  narrow  race  it  has  exerted  its 
power  wherever  the  influence  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures 
has  been  felt.  It  has  toppled  thrones  and  cast  down  hier- 


Moses  23 

archies.  It  strengthened  the  Scottish  Covenanter  in  the 
hour  of  trial,  and  the  Puritan  amid  the  snows  of  a  strange 
land.  It  charged  with  the  Ironsides  at  Nasby;  it  stood 
behind  the  low  redoubt  on  Bunker  Hill. 

But  it  is  in  example  as  in  deed  that  such  lives  are  help- 
ful. It  is  thus  that  they  dignify  human  nature  and  glorify 
human  effort,  and  bring  to  those  who  struggle,  hope  and 
trust.  The  life  of  Moses,  like  the  institutions  of  Moses,  is 
a  protest  against  that  blasphemous  doctrine,  current  now  as 
it  was  three  thousand  years  ago — that  blasphemous  doc- 
trine preached  ofttimes  even  from  Christian  pulpits — that 
the  want  and  suffering  of  the  masses  of  mankind  flow 
from  a  mysterious  dispensation  of  Providence,  which  we 
may  lament,  but  can  neither  quarrel  with  nor  alter.  Let 
him  who  hugs  that  doctrine  to  himself,  him  to  whom  it 
seems  that  the  squalor  and  brutishness  with  which  the  very 
centers  of  our  civilization  abound  are  not  his  affair,  turn 
to  the  example  of  that  life.  For  to  him  who  will  look,  yet 
burns  the  bush ;  and  to  him  who  will  hear,  again  comes  the 
voice :  "The  people  suffer,  who  will  lead  them  forth  ?" 

Adopted  into  the  immediate  family  of  the  supreme 
monarch  and  earthly  god;  standing  almost  at  the  apex  of 
the  social  pyramid  which  had  for  its  base  those  toiling  mil- 
lions; priest  and  prince  in  a  land  where  prince  and  priest 
might  revel  in  all  delights — everything  that  life  could  offer 
to  gratify  the  senses  or  engage  the  intellect  was  open  to  him. 

What  to  him  the  wail  of  them  who  beneath  the  fierce 
sun  toiled  under  the  whips  of  relentless  masters?  Heard 
from  granite  colonnade  or  beneath  cool  linen  awning,  it 
was  mellowed  by  distance  to  monotonous  music.  Why 
should  he  question  the  Sphinx  of  Fate,  or  quarrel  with  des- 
tinies the  high  gods  had  decreed?  So  had  it  always  been, 
for  ages  and  ages;  so  must  it  ever  be.  The  beetle  rends 
the  insect,  and  the  hawk  preys  on  the  beetle ;  order  on  or- 
der, life  rises  from  death  and  carnage,  and  higher  pleas- 


24  Moses 

ures  from  lower  agonies.  Shall  the  man  be  better  than  na- 
ture? Soothing  and  restful  flows  the  Nile,  though  under- 
neath its  placid  surface  finny  tribes  wage  cruel  war,  and 
the  stronger  eat  the  weaker.  Shall  the  gazer  who  would 
read  the  secrets  of  the  stars  turn  because  under  his  feet  a 
worm  may  writhe? 

Theirs  to  make  bricks  without  straw;  his  a  high  place 
in  the  glorious  procession  that  with  gorgeous  banners  and 
glittering  emblems,  with  clash  of  music  and  solemn  chant, 
winds  its  shining  way  to  dedicate  the  immortal  edifice 
their  toil  has  reared.  Theirs  the  leek  and  the  garlic,  his 
to  sit  at  the  sumptuous  feast.  Why  should  he  dwell  on  the 
irksomeness  of  bondage,  he  for  whom  the  chariots  waited, 
who  might  at  will  bestride  the  swift  coursers  of  the  Delta, 
or  be  borne  on  the  bosom  of  the  river  with  oars  that  beat 
time  to  songs  ?  Did  he  long  for  the  excitement  of  action  ? 
— there  was  the  desert  hunt,  with  the  steeds  fleeter  than 
the  antelope  and  lions  trained  like  dogs.  Did  he  crave  rest 
and  ease  ? — there  was  for  him  the  soft  swell  of  languorous 
music  and  the  wreathed  movements  of  dancing  girls. 
Did  he  feel  the  stir  of  intellectual  life? — in  the  arcana 
of  the  temples  he  was  free  to  the  lore  of  ages ;  an  initiate 
in  the  select  society  where  were  discussed  the  most  en- 
grossing problems ;  a  sharer  in  that  intellectual  pride  that 
centuries  after  compared  Greek  philosophy  to  the  bab- 
blings of  children. 

It  was  no  sudden  ebullition  of  passion  that  caused 
Moses  to  turn  his  back  on  all  this,  and  to  bring  the  strength 
and  knowledge  acquired  in  a  dominant  caste  to  the  life- 
long service  of  the  oppressed.  The  forgetfulness  of  self 
manifested  in  the  smiting  of  the  Egyptians  shines  through 
the  whole  life.  In  institutions  that  moulded  the  character 
of  a  people,  in  institutions  that  to  this  day  make  easier  the 
lot  of  toiling  millions,  we  may  read  the  stately  purpose. 

Through  all  that  tradition  has  given  us  of  that  life 


Moses  25 

runs  the  same  grand  passion — the  unselfish"  desire  to  make 
humanity  better,  happier,  nobler.  And  the  death  is  worthy 
of  the  life.  Subordinating  to  the  good  of  his  people  the 
natural  disposition  to  found  a  dynasty,  which  in  his  case 
would  have  been  so  easy,  he  discards  the  claims  of  blood 
and  calls  to  his  place  of  leader  the  fittest  man.  Coming 
from  a  land  where  the  rights  of  sepulture  were  regarded 
as  all  important,  and  the  preservation  of  the  body  after 
death  was  the  passion  of  life;  among  a  people  who  were 
even  then  carrying  the  remains  of  their  great  ancestor, 
Joseph,  to  rest  with  his  fathers,  he  yet  conquered  the  last 
natural  yearning  and  withdrew  from  the  sight  and  sympa- 
thy of  men  to  die  alone  and  unattended,  lest  the  idolatrous 
feeling,  always  ready  to  break  forth,  should  in  death  ac- 
cord him  the  superstitious  reverence  he  had  refused  in  life. 

"No  man  knoweth  of  his  sepulchre  unto  this  day."  But 
while  the  despoiled  tombs  of  the  pharaohs  mock  the  vanity 
that  reared  them,  the  name  of  the  Hebrew  who,  revolting 
from  their  tyranny,  strove  for  the  elevation  of  his  fellow- 
men,  is  yet  a  beacon  light  to  the  world. 

Leader  and  servant  of  men !  Law-giver  and  benefac- 
tor !  Toiler  toward  the  promised  land  seen  only  by  the  eye 
of  faith !  Type  of  the  high  souls  who  in  every  age  have 
given  to  earth  its  heroes  and  its  martyrs,  whose  deeds  are 
the  precious  possession  of  the  race,  whose  memories  are 
its  sacred  heritage!  With  whom  among  the  founders  of 
empire  shall  we  compare  him? 

To  dispute  about  the  inspiration  of  such  a  man  were  to 
dispute  about  words.  From  the  depths  of  the  unseen  such 
characters  must  draw  their  strength;  from  fountains  that 
flow  only  from  the  pure  in  heart  must  come  their  wisdom. 
Of  something  more  real  than  matter;  of  something  higher 
than  the  stars;  of  a  light  that  will  endure  when  suns  are 
dead  and  dark ;  of  a  purpose  of  which  the  physical  universe 
is  but  a  passing  phase,  such  lives  tell. 


THE  CRIME  OF  POVERTY 


The  Crime  of  Poverty 

Poverty  is  a  crime.  I  do  not  mean  that  it  is  a  crime  to 
be  poor.  Murder  is  a  crime;  but  it  is  not  a  crime  to  be 
murdered ;  and  a  man  who  is  in  poverty  I  look  upon  not  as 
a  criminal  in  himself  so  much  as  the  victim  of  a  crime  for 
which  others,  as  well,  perhaps,  as  himself,  are  responsi- 
ble. That  poverty  is  a  curse,  the  bitterest  of  curses,  we 
all  know.  Carlyle  was  right  when  he  said  that  the  hell 
of  which  Englishmen  are  most  afraid  is  the  hell  of 
poverty;  and  this  is  true,  not  of  Englishmen  alone,  but 
of  people  all  over  the  civilized  world,  no  matter  what 
their  nationality.  It  is  to  escape  this  hell  that  we  strive 
and  strain  and  struggle;  and  work  on  oftentimes  in  blind 
habit  long  after  the  necessity  for  work  is  gone. 

The  curse  born  of  poverty  is  not  confined  to  the  poor 
alone;  it  runs  through  all  classes,  even  to  the  very  rich. 
They,  too,  suffer;  they  must  suffer;  for  there  cannot  be 
suffering  in  a  community  from  which  any  class  can  totally 
escape.  The  vice,  the  crime,  the  ignorance,  the  meanness, 
born  of  poverty,  poison,  so  to  speak,  the  very  air  which 
rich  and  poor  alike  must  breathe. 

I  walked  down  one  of  your  streets  this  morning,  and 
I  saw  three  men  going  along  with  their  hands  chained 
together.  I  knew  for  certain  that  those  men  were  not 
rich  men ;  and,  although  I  do  not  know  the  offense  for 
which  they  were  carried  in  chains  through  your  streets, 
this,  I  think,  I  can  safely  say,  that,  if  you  trace  it  up  you 
will  find  it  in  some  way  to  spring  from  poverty.  Nine- 

An  address  delivered  in  the  Opera  House,  Burlington,  Iowa,  April 
1,  1885,  under  the  auspices  of  Burlington  Assembly,  No.  3135,  Knights 
of  Labor. 

31 


32  The   Crime  of  Poverty 

tenths  of  human  misery,  I  think  you  will  find,  if  you 
look,  to  be  due  to  poverty.  If  a  man  chooses  to  be  poor, 
he  commits  no  crime  in  being  poor,  provided  his  poverty 
hurts  no  one  but  himself.  If  a  man  has  others  dependent 
upon  him;  if  there  are  a  wife  and  children  whom  it  is  his 
duty  to  support,  then,  if  he  voluntarily  chooses  poverty, 
it  is  a  crime — aye,  and  I  think  that,  in  most  cases,  the  men 
who  have  no  one  to  support  but  themselves  are  men  that 
are  shirking  their  duty.  A  woman  comes  into  the  world 
for  every  man;  and  for  every  man  who  lives  a  single  life, 
caring  only  for  himself,  there  is  some  woman  who  is 
deprived  of  her  natural  supporter.  But  while  a  man  who 
chooses  to  be  poor  cannot  be  charged  with  crime,  it  is 
certainly  a  crime  to  force  poverty  on  others.  And  it 
seems  to  me  clear  that  the  great  majority  of  those  who 
suffer  from  poverty  are  poor  not  from  their  own  particular 
faults,  but  because  of  conditions  imposed  by  society  at 
large.  Therefore,  I  hold  that  poverty  is  a  crime — not  an 
individual  crime,  but  a  social  crime;  a  crime  for  which  we 
all,  poor  as  well  as  rich,  are  responsible. 

Two  or  three  weeks  ago  I  went  one  Sunday  evening 
to  the  church  of  a  famous  Brooklyn  preacher.  Mr. 
Sankey  was  singing,  and  something  like  a  revival  was 
going  on  there.  The  clergyman  told  some  anecdotes  con- 
nected with  the  revival,  and  recounted  some  of  the  rea- 
sons why  men  failed  to  become  Christians.  One  case  he 
mentioned  struck  me.  He  said  he  had  noticed  on  the  out- 
skirts of  the  congregation,  night  after  night,  a  man  who 
listened  intently,  and  who  gradually  moved  forward.  One 
night,  the  clergyman  said,  he  went  to  him,  saying,  "My 
brother,  are  you  not  ready  to  become  a  Christian?"  The 
man  said,  no  he  was  not.  He  said  it,  not  in  a  defiant  tone, 
but  in  a  sorrowful  tone.  The  clergyman  asked  him  why, 
whether  he  did  not  believe  in  the  truths  he  had  been  hear- 
ing? Yes,  he  believed  them  all.  Why,  then,  wouldn't  he 


The   Crime  of  Poverty  38 

become  a  Christian?  "Well,"  he  said,  "I  can't  join  the 
church  without  giving  up  my  business;  and  it  is  neces- 
sary for  the  support  of  my  wife  and  children.  If  I  give 
that  up,  I  don't  know  how  in  the  world  I  can  get  along. 
I  had  a  hard  time  before  I  found  my  present  business,  and 
I  cannot  afford  to  give  it  up.  Yet,  I  can't  become  a  Chris- 
tian without  giving  it  up."  The  clergyman  asked,  "Are. 
you  a  rum-seller?"  No,  he  was  not  a  rum-seller.  Well, 
the  clergyman  said,  he  didn't  know  what  in  the  world  the 
man  could  be;  it  seemed  to  him  that  a  rum-seller  was  the 
only  man  who  does  a  business  that  would  prevent  his  be- 
coming a  Christian;  and  he  finally  said,  "What  is  your 
business?"  The  man  said,  "I  sell  soap."  "Soap!"  ex- 
claimed the  clergyman,  "you  sell  soap?  How  in  the  world 
does  that  prevent  your  becoming  a  Christian?"  "Well," 
the  man  said,  "It  is  this  way ;  the  soap  I  sell  is  one  of  these 
patent  soaps  that  are  extensively  advertised  as  enabling 
you  to  clean  clothes  very  quickly;  as  containing  no  dele- 
terious compound  whatever.  Every  cake  of  the  soap  that  I 
sell  is  wrapped  in  a  paper  on  which  is  printed  a  statement 
that  it  contains  no  injurious  chemicals,  whereas  the  truth 
of  the  matter  is  that  it  does,  and  that  though  it  will  take 
the  dirt  out  of  the  clothes  pretty  quickly,  it  will,  in  a  little 
while,  rot  them  completely.  I  have  to  make  my  living 
in  this  way ;  and  I  cannot  feel  that  I  can  become  a  Chris- 
tian if  I  sell  that  soap."  The  minister  went  on  describing 
how  he  labored  unsuccessfully  with  that  man,  and  finally 
wound  up  by  saying,  ''He  stuck  to  his  soap,  and  lost  his 
soul." 

But,  if  that  man  lost  his  soul,  was  it  his  fault  alone? 
Whose  fault  is  it  that  social  conditions  are  such  that  men 
have  to  make  that  terrible  choice  between  what  con- 
science tells  them  is  right,  and  the  necessity  of  earning  a 
living?  I  hold  that  it  is  the  fault  of  society;  that  it  is  the 
fault  of  us  all.  Pestilence  is  a  curse.  The  man  who 


34  The   Crime  of  Poverty 

would  bring  cholera  to  this  country,  or  the  man  who, 
having  the  power  to  prevent  its  coming  here,  would  make 
no  effort  to  do  so,  would  be  guilty  of  a  crime.  Poverty  is 
worse  than  cholera;  poverty  kills  more  people  than  pesti- 
lence, even  in  the  best  of  times.  Look  at  the  death  sta- 
tistics of  our  cities ;  see  where  the  deaths  come  quick- 
est; see  where  it  is  that  little  children  die  like  flies — it  is 
in  the  poorer  quarters.  And  the  man  who  looks  with  care- 
less eyes  upon  the  ravages  of  this  pestilence,  the  man  who 
does  not  set  himself  to  stay  and  eradicate  it,  he,  I  say,  is 
guilty  of  a  crime. 

If  poverty  is  appointed  by  the  power  which  is  above 
us  all,  then  it  is  no  crime;  but  if  poverty  is  unnecessary, 
then  it  is  a  crime  for  which  society  is  responsible,  and  for 
which  society  must  suffer. 

I  hold,  and  I  think  no  one  who  looks  at  the  facts  can 
fail  to  see,  that  poverty  is  utterly  unnecessary.  It  is 
not  by  the  decree  of  the  Almighty,  but  it  is  because  of  our 
own  injustice,  our  own  selfishness,  our  own  ignorance, 
that  this  scourge,  worse  than  any  pestilence,  ravages  our 
civilization,  bringing  want  and  suffering  and  degradation, 
destroying  souls  as  well  as  bodies.  Look  over  the  world, 
in  this  hey-day  of  nineteenth  century  civilization.  In 
every  civilized  country  under  the  sun  you  will  find  men 
and  women  whose  condition  is  worse  than  that  of  the 
savage;  men  and  women  and  little  children  with  whom 
the  veriest  savage  could  not  afford  to  exchange.  Even 
in  this  new  city  of  yours,  with  virgin  soil  around  you, 
you  have  had  this  winter  to  institute  a  relief  society. 
Your  roads  have  been  filled  with  tramps,  fifteen,  I  am  told, 
at  one  time  taking  shelter  in  a  round-house  here.  As 
here,  so  everywhere,  and  poverty  is  deepest  where  wealth 
most  abounds. 

What  more  unnatural  than  this?  There  is  nothing  in 
nature  like  this  poverty  which  today  curses  us.  We  see 


The   Crime  of  Poverty  35 

rapine  in  nature;  we  see  one  species  destroying  another; 
but  as  a  general  thing  animals  do  not  feed  on  their  own 
kind;  and,  wherever  we  see  one  kind  enjoying  plenty,  all 
creatures  of  that  kind  share  it.  No  man,  I  think,  ever 
saw  a  herd  of  buffalo,  of  which  a  few  were  fat  and  the 
great  majority  lean.  No  man  ever  saw  a  flock  of  birds, 
of  which  two  or  three  were  swimming  in  grease,  and  the 
others  all  skin  and  bone.  Nor  in  savage  life  is  there 
anything  like  the  poverty  that  festers  in  our  civilization. 

In  a  rude  state  of  society  there  are  seasons  of  want, 
seasons  when  people  starve ;  but  they  are  seasons  when 
the  earth  has  refused  to  yield  her  increase,  when  the  rain 
has  not  fallen  from  the  heavens,  or  when  the  land  has 

been  swept  by  some  foe not  when  there  is  plenty ;  and 

yet  the  peculiar  characteristic  of  this  modern  poverty  of 
ours  is,  that  it  is  deepest  where  wealth  most  abounds. 

Why,  today,  while  over  the  civilized  world  there  is 
so  much  distress,  so  much  want,  what  is  the  cry  that 
goes  up?  What  is  the  current  explanation  of  the  hard 
times  ?  Over-production !  There  are  so  many  clothes 
that  men  must  go  ragged;  so  much  coal  that  in  the  bitter 
winters  people  have  to  shiver;  such  over-filled  granaries 
that  people  actually  die  by  starvation  !  Want  due  to  over- 
production !  Was  a  greater  absurdity  ever  uttered  ?  How 
can  there  be  over-production  till  all  have  enough?  It  is 
not  over-production,  it  is  unjust  distribution. 

Poverty  necessary !  Why,  think  of  the  enormous  pow- 
ers that  are  latent  in  the  human  brain !  Think  how  inven- 
tion enables  us  to  do  with  the  power  of  one  man,  what 
not  long  ago  could  not  be  done  by  the  power  of  a  thou- 
sand. Think  that  in  England  alone,  the  steam  machinery 
in  operation  is  said  to  exert  a  productive  force  greater 
than  the  physical  force  of  the  population  of  the  world, 
were  they  all  adults.  And  yet  we  have  only  begun  to  in- 
vent and  discover.  We  have  not  yet  utilized  all  that  has 


36  The   Crime  of  Poverty 

already  been  invented  and  discovered.  And  look  at  the 
powers  of  the  earth.  They  have  hardly  been  touched. 
In  every  direction  as  we  look,  new  resources  seem  to  open. 
Man's  ability  to  produce  wealth  seems  almost  infinite — 
we  can  set  no  bounds  to  it.  Look  at  the  power  that  is 
flowing  by  your  city  in  the  current  of  the  Mississippi 
that  might  be  set  at  work  for  you.  So  in  every  direction 
energy  that  we  might  utilize  goes  to  waste ;  resources 
that  we  might  draw  upon  are  untouched.  Yet  men  are 
delving  and  straining  to  satisfy  mere  animal  wants;  wo- 
men are  working,  working,  working  their  lives  away,  and 
too  frequently  turning  in  despair  from  that  hard  struggle 
to  cast  away  all  that  makes  the  charm  of  woman. 

If  the  animals  can  reason,  what  must  they  think  of 
us?  Look  at  one  of  those  great  ocean  steamers  plough- 
ing her  way  across  the  Atlantic,  against  wind,  against 
wave,  absolutely  setting  at  defiance  the  utmost  power  of 
the  elements.  If  the  gulls  that  hover  over  her  were 
thinking  beings,  could  they  imagine  that  the  animal  that 
could  create  such  a  structure  as  that  could  actually  want 
for  enough  to  eat?  Yet,  so  it  is.  How  many  even  of 
those  of  us  who  find  life  easiest  are  there  who  really  live 
a  rational  life?  Think  of  it,  you  who  believe  that  there 
is  only  one  life  for  man — what  a  fool  at  the  very  best  is 
a  man  to  pass  his  life  in  this  struggle  to  merely  live?  And 
you  who  believe,  as  I  believe,  that  this  is  not  the  last  of 
man,  that  this  is  a  life  that  opens  but  another  life,  think 
how  nine-tenths,  aye,  I  do  not  know  but  ninety-nine 
hundredths  of  all  our  vital  powers  are  spent  in  a  mere 
effort  to  get  a  living;  or  to  heap  together  that  which  we 
cannot  by  any  possibility  take  away.  Take  the  life  of  the 
average  workingman.  Is  that  the  life  for  which  the  hu- 
man brain  was  intended  and  the  human  heart  was  made? 
Look  at  the  factories  scattered  through  our  country. 
They  are  little  better  than  penitentiaries. 


The   Crime  of  Poverty  3? 

I  read  in  the  New  York  papers  a  while  ago  that  the 
girls  at  the  Yonkers  factories  had  struck.  The  papers 
said  that  the  girls  did  not  seem  to  know  why  they  had 
struck,  and  intimated  that  it  must  be  just  for  the  fun  of 
striking.  Then  came  out  the  girls'  side  of  the  story,  and 
it  appeared  that  they  had  struck  against  the  rules  in 
force.  They  were  fined  if  they  spoke  to  one  another, 
and  they  were  fined  still  more  heavily  if  they  laughed. 
There  was  a  heavy  fine  for  being  a  minute  late.  I  visited 
a  lady  in  Philadelphia  who  had  been  a  forewoman  in 
various  factories,  and  I  asked  her,  "Is  it  possible  that 
such  rules  are  enforced?"  She  said  it  was  so  in  Philadel- 
phia. There  is  a  fine  for  speaking  to  your  next  neigh- 
bor, a  fine  for  laughing;  and  she  told  me  thai  the  girls  in 
one  place  where  she  was  employed  were  fined  ten  cents  a 
minute  for  being  late,  though  many  of  them  had  to  come 
for  miles  in  winter  storms.  She  told  me  of  one  poor  girl 
who  really  worked  hard  one  week  and  made  $3.50,  but  the 
fines  against  her  were  $5.25.  That  seems  ridiculous;  it 
is  ridiculous,  but  it  is  pathetic,  and  it  is  shameful. 

But  take  the  cases  of  those  even  who  are  comparatively 
independent  and  well  off.  Here  is  a  man  working  hour 
after  hour,  day  after  day,  week  after  week,  in  doing  one 
thing  over  and  over  again,  and  for  what  ?  Just  to  live. 
He  is  working  ten  hours  a  day  in  order  that  he  may  sleep 
eight,  and  may  have  two  or  three  hours  for  himself  when 
he  is  tired  out  and  all  his  faculties  are  exhausted.  That 
is  not  a  reasonable  life;  that  is  not  a  life  for  a  being  pos- 
sessed of  the  powers  that  are  in  man,  and  I  think  every 
man  must  have  felt  it  for  himself.  I  know  that  when  I 
first  went  to  my  trade  I  thought  to  myself  that  it  was  in- 
credible that  a  man  was  created  to  work  all  day  long 
just  to  live.  I  used  to  read  the  Scientific  American,  and 
as  invention  after  invention  was  heralded  in  that  paper,  I 


38  The   Crime  of  Poverty 

used  to  think  to  myself  that  when  I  became  a  man  it  would 
not  be  necessary  to  work  so  hard.  But,  on  the  contrary, 
the  struggle  for  existence  has  become  more  and  more  in- 
tense. People  who  want  to  prove  the  contrary  get  up 
masses  of  statistics  to  show  that  the  condition  of  the 
working  classes  is  improving.  Improvement  that  you 
have  to  take  a  statistical  microscope  to  discover  does  not 
amount  to  anything.  But  there  is  no  improvement. 

Improvement !  Why,  according  to  the  last  report  of 
the  Michigan  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics,  as  I  read  yes- 
terday in  a  Detroit  paper,  taking  all  the  trades,  including 
some  of  the  very  high  priced  ones,  where  the  wages  are 
from  $6  to  $7  a  day,  the  average  earnings  amount  to  $1.77, 
and  taking  out  waste  time,  to  $1.40.  Now  when  you  con- 
sider how  a  man  can  live  and  bring  up  a  family  on  $1.40 
a  day,  even  in  Michigan,  I  do  not  think  you  will  conclude 
that  the  condition  of  the  working  classes  can  have  very 
much  improved. 

Here  is  a  broad  general  fact  that  is  asserted  by  all  who 
have  investigated  the  question,  by  such  men  as  Hallam, 
the  historian,  and  Professor  Thorold  Rogers,  who  has  made 
a  study  of  the  history  of  prices  as  they  were  five  centuries 
ago.  When  all  the  productive  arts  were  in  the  most  prim- 
itive state,  when  the  most  prolific  of  our  modern  vegeta- 
bles had  not  been  introduced,  when  the  breeds  of  cattle 
were  small  and  poor,  when  there  were  hardly  any  roads 
and  transportation  was  exceedingly  difficult,  when  all  man- 
ufacturing was  done  by  hand — in  that  rude  time  the  condi- 
tion of  the  laborers  of  England  was  far  better  than  it  is 
today.  In  those  rude  times  no  man  need  fear  want  save 
when  actual  famine  came,  and  owing  to  the  difficulties  of 
transportation  the  plenty  of  one  district  could  not  relieve 
the  scarcity  of  another.  Save  in  such  times  no  man  need 
fear  want.  Pauperism,  such  as  exists  in  modern  times, 
was  absolutely  unknown.  Every  one,  save  the  physically 


The  Crime  of  Poverty  39 

disabled,  could  make  a  living,  and  the  poorest  lived  in  rude 
plenty.  But,  perhaps,  the  most  astonishing  fact  brought 
to  light  by  this  investigation  is  that  at  that  time,  under 
those  conditions,  in  those  "dark  ages,"  as  we  call  them, 
the  working  day  was  only  eight  hours.  While,  with  all  our 
modern  inventions  and  improvements,  our  working  classes 
have  been  agitating  and  struggling  in  vain  to  get  the 
working  day  reduced  to  eight  hours. 

Do  these  facts  show  improvement?  Why,  in  the  rud- 
est state  of  society,  in  the  most  primitive  state  of  the 
arts,  the  labor  of  the  natural  bread-winner  will  suffice  to 
provide  a  living  for  himself  and  for  those  who  are  de- 
pendent upon  him.  Amid  all  our  inventions  there  are 
large  bodies  of  men  who  cannot  do  this.  What  is  the  most 
astonishing  thing  in  our  civilization?  Why,  the  most 
astonishing  thing  to  those  Sioux  chiefs  who  were  recently 
brought  from  the  Far  West  and  taken  through  our  manu- 
facturing cities  in  the  East,  was  not  the  marvelous  inven- 
tions that  enabled  machinery  to  act  almost  as  if  it  had 
intellect;  it  was  not  the  growth  of  our  cities;  it  was  not 
the  speed  with  which  the  railway  car  whirled  along;  it 
was  not  the  telegraph  or  the  telephone  that  most  aston- 
ished them,  but  the  fact  that  amid  this  marvelous  devel- 
opment of  productive  power,  they  found  little  children  at 
work.  And  astonishing  that  ought  to  be  to  us;  a  most 
astounding  thing ! 

Talk  about  improvement  in  the  condition  of  the  work- 
ing classes,  when  the  facts  are  that  a  larger  and  larger 
proportion  of  women  and  children  are  forced  to  toil. 
Why,  I  am  told  that,  even  here  in  your  own  city,  there 
are  children  of  thirteen  and  fourteen  working  in  factories. 
In  Detroit,  according  to  the  report  of  the  Michigan  Bu- 
reau of  Labor  Statistics,  one-half  of  the  children  of  school 
age  do  not  go  to  school.  In  New  Jersey,  the  report  made 
to  the  legislature  discloses  an  amount  of  misery  and 


40  The   Crime  of  Poverty 

ignorance  that  is  appalling.  Children  are  growing  up 
there,  compelled  to  monotonous  toil  when  they  ought  to 
be  at  play;  children  who  do  not  know  how  to  play;  chil- 
dren who  have  been  so  long  accustomed  to  work  that  they 
have  become  used  to  it;  children  growing  up  in  such 
ignorance  that  they  do  not  know  what  country  New 
Jersey  is  in,  that  they  never  heard  of  George  Washing- 
ton, that  some  of  them  think  Europe  is  in  New  York. 
Such  facts  are  appalling;  they  mean  that  the  very  founda- 
tions of  the  Republic  are  being  sapped.  The  dangerous 
man  is  not  the  man  who  tries  to  excite  discontent;  the 
dangerous  man  is  the  man  who  says  that  all  is  as  it 
ought  to  be.  Such  a  state  of  things  cannot  continue; 
such  tendencies  as  we  see  at  work  here  cannot  go  on 
without  bringing  at  last  an  overwhelming  crash. 

I  say  that  all  this  poverty  and  the  ignorance  that  flows 
from  it  is  unnecessary;  I  say  that  there  is  no  natural  rea- 
son why  we  should  not  all  be  rich,  in  the  sense,  not  of 
having  more  than  each  other,  but  in  the  sense  of  all  having 
enough  to  completely  satisfy  all  physical  wants;  of  all 
having  enough  to  get  such  an  easy  living  that  we  could 
develop  the  better  part  of  humanity.  There  is  no  reason 
why  wealth  should  not  be  so  abundant,  that  no  one  should 
think  of  such  a  thing  as  little  children  at  work,  or  a 
woman  compelled  to  a  toil  that  nature  never  intended  her 
to  perform ;  wealth  so  abundant  that  there  would  be  no 
cause  for  that  harassing  fear  that  sometimes  paralyzes 
even  those  who  are  not  considered  "the  poor,"  the  fear 
that  every  man  of  us  has  probably  felt,  that  if  sickness 
should  smite  him,  or  if  he  should  be  taken  away,  those 
whom  he  loves  better  than  his  life  would  become  charges 
upon  charity.  "Consider  the  lilies  of  the  field,  how  they 
grow ;  they  toil  not,  neither  do  they  spin."  I  believe  that 
in  a  really  Christian  community,  in  a  society  that  honored 
not  with  the  lips  but  with  the  act,  the  doctrines  of  Jesus, 


The  Crime  of  Poverty  41 

no  one  would  have  occasion  to  worry  about  physical  needs 
any  more  than  do  the  lilies  of  the  field.  There  is  enough 
and  to  spare.  The  trouble  is  that,  in  this  mad  struggle, 
we  trample  in  the  mire  what  has  been  provided  in  suf- 
ficiency for  us  all;  trample  it  in  the  mire  while  we  tear 
and  rend  each  other. 

There  is  a  cause  for  this  poverty,  and  if  you  trace  it 
down,  you  will  find  its  root  in  a  primary  injustice.  Look 
over  the  world  today — poverty  everywhere.  The  cause 
must  be  a  common  one.  You  cannot  attribute  it  to  the 
tariff,  or  the  form  of  government,  or  to  this  thing  or 
to  that  in  which  nations  differ;  because,  as  deep  poverty 
is  common  to  them  all,  the  cause  that  produces  it  must 
be  a  common  cause.  What  is  that  common  cause  ?  There 
is  one  sufficient  cause  that  is  common  to  all  nations;  and 
that  is,  the  appropriation  as  the  property  of  some,  of  that 
natural  element  on  which  and  from  which,  all  must  live. 

Take  that  fact  I  have  spoken  of,  that  appalling  fact 
that,  even  now,  it  is  harder  to  live  than  it  was  in  the 
ages  dark  and  rude  five  centuries  ago — how  do  you 
explain  it?  There  is  no  difficulty  in  finding  the  cause. 
Whoever  reads  the  history  of  England,  or  the  history  of 
any  other  civilized  nation  (but  I  speak  of  the  history 
of  England  because  that  is  the  history  with  which  we 
are  best  acquainted)  will  see  the  reason.  For  century 
after  century  a  Parliament  composed  of  aristocrats  and 
employers  passed  laws  endeavoring  to  reduce  wages,  but 
in  vain.  Men  could  not  be  crowded  down  to  wages  that 
gave  a  mere  living  because  the  bounty  of  nature  was  not 
wholly  shut  up  from  them;  because  some  remains  of  the 
recognition  of  the  truth  that  all  men  have  equal  rights 
on  the  earth  still  existed;  because  the  land  of  that  coun- 
try, that  which  was  held  in  private  possession,  was  only 
held  on  a  tenure  derived  from  the  nation,  and  for  a  rent 
payable  back  to  the  nation.  The  church  lands  supported 


42  The   Crime  of  Poverty 

the  expenses  of  public  worship,  of  the  maintenance  of 
seminaries,  and  the  care  of  the  poor;  the  crown  lands 
defrayed  the  expenses  of  the  civil  list;  and  from  a  third 
portion  of  the  lands,  those  held  under  military  tenures, 
the  army  was  provided  for.  There  waS  no  national  debt 
in  England  at  that  time.  They  carried  on  wars  for  hun- 
dreds of  years,  but  at  the  charge  of  the  landowners.  And, 
more  important  still,  there  remained  everywhere,  and  you 
can  see  in  every  old  English  town  their  traces  to  this 
day,  the  common  lands  to  which  any  of  the  neighbor- 
hood was  free.  It  was  as  those  lands  were  enclosed; 
it  was  as  the  commons  were  gradually  monopolized,  as 
the  church  lands  were  made  the  prey  of  greedy  courtiers, 
as  the  crown  lands  were  given  away  as  absolute  property 
to  the  favorites  of  the  king,  as  the  military  tenants 
shirked  their  rents,  and  laid  the  expenses  they  had  agreed 
to  defray  upon  the  nation  in  taxation,  that  bore  upon 
industry  and  upon  thrift — it  was  then  that  poverty  began 
to  deepen,  and  the  tramp  appeared  in  England,  just  as 
today  he  is  appearing  in  our  new  States. 

Now,  think  of  it — is  not  land  monopolization  a  suffi- 
cient reason  for  poverty?  What  is  man?  In  the  first 
place,  he  is  an  animal,  a  land  animal,  who  cannot  live 
without  land.  All  that  man  produces  comes  from  land, 
all  productive  labor  in  the  final  analysis  consists  in  work- 
ing up  land;  or  materials  drawn  from  land  into  such 
forms  as  fit  them  for  the  satisfaction  of  human  wants 
and  desires.  Why,  man's  very  body  is  drawn  from  the 
land.  Children  of  the  soil,  we  come  from  the  land,  and 
to  the  land  we  must  return.  Take  away  from  man  all 
that  belongs  to  the  land,  and  what  have  you  but  a  dis- 
embodied spirit?  Therefore,  he  who  holds  the  land  on 
which  and  from  which  another  man  must  live,  is  that 
man's  master;  and  the  man  is  his  slave.  The  man  who 
holds  the  land  on  which  I  must  live  can  command  me  to 


The  Crime  of  Poverty  43 

life  or  to  death  just  as  absolutely  as  though  I  were  his 
chattel.  Talk  about  abolishing  slavery — we  have  not 
abolished  slavery — we  have  only  abolished  one  rude  form 
of  it,  chattel  slavery.  There  is  a  deeper  and  more  in- 
sidious form,  a  more  cursed  form  yet  before  us  to  abol- 
ish, in  this  industrial  slavery  that  makes  a  man  a  virtual 
slave,  while  taunting  him  and  mocking  him  with  the  name 
of  freedom.  Poverty !  want !  they  will  sting  as  much 
as  the  lash.  Slavery!  God  knows  there  are  horrors 
enough  in  slavery;  but  there  are  deeper  horrors  in  our 
civilized  society  today.  Bad  as  chattel  slavery  was,  it  did 
not  drive  slave  mothers  to  kill  their  children,  yet  you  may 
read  in  official  reports  that  the  system  of  child  insurance, 
which  has  taken  root  so  strongly  in  England,  and  which 
is  now  spreading  over  our  Eastern  States,  has  perceptibly 
and  largely  increased  the  rate  of  child  mortality ! — What 
does  that  mean  ? 

Robinson  Crusoe,  as  you  know,  when  he  rescued 
Friday  from  the  cannibals,  made  him  his  slave.  Friday 
had  to  serve  Crusoe.  But,  supposing  Crusoe  had  said, 
"Oh,  man  and  brother,  I  am  very  glad  to  see  you,  and  I 
welcome  you  to  this  island,  and  you  shall  be  a  free  and 
independent  citizen,  with  just  as  much  to  say  as  I  have — 
except  that  this  island  is  mine — and,  of  course,  as  T  can 
do  as  I  please  with  my  own  property,  you  must  not  use  it 
save  upon  my  terms,"  Friday  would  have  been  just  as 
much  Crusoe's  slave  as  though  he  had  called  him  one. 
Friday  was  not  a  fish,  he  could  not  swim  off  through  the 
sea ;  he  was  not  a  bird,  and  could  not  fly  off  through  the 
air;  if  he  lived  at  all,  he  had  to  live  on  that  island.  And 
if  that  island  was  Crusoe's,  Crusoe  was  his  master  through 
life  to  death. 

A  friend  of  mine,  who  believes  as  I  do  upon  this 
question,  was  talking  a  while  ago  with  another  friend  of 
mine  who  is  a  greenbacker,  but  who  had  not  paid  much 


44  The  Crime  of  Poverty 

attention  to  the  land  question.  Our  greenback  friend 
said,  "Yes,  yes,  the  land  question  is  an  important  ques- 
tion; oh,  I  admit  the  land  question  is  a  very  im- 
portant question;  but  then  there  are  other  important 
questions.  There  is  this  question,  and  that  question,  and 
the  other  question ;  and  there  is  the  money  question.  The 
money  question  is  a  very  important  question;  it  is  a 
more  important  question  than  the  land  question.  You 
give  me  all  the  money,  and  you  can  take  all  the  land." 
My  friend  said,  "Well,  suppose  you  had  all  the  money  in 
the  world  and  I  had  all  the  land  in  the  world.  What 
would  you  do  if  I  were  to  give  you  notice  to  quit?" 

Do  you  know  that  I  do  not  think  the  average  man 
realizes  what  land  is?  I  know  a  little  girl  who  has  been 
going  to  school  for  some  time,  studying  geography,  and 
all  that  sort  of  thing;  and  one  day  she  said  to  me:  "Here 
is  something  about  the  surface  of  the  earth.  I  wonder 
what  the  surface  of  the  earth  looks  like?"  "Well,"  I 
said,  "look  out  into  the  yard  there.  That  is  the  surface 
of  the  earth."  She  said,  "That  the  surface  of  the  earth? 
Our  yard  the  surface  of  the  earth?  Why,  I  never 
thought  of  it!"  That  is  very  much  the  case  not  only  with 
grown  men,  but  with  such  wise  beings  as  newspaper 
editors.  They  seem  to  think,  when  you  talk  of  land,  that 
you  always  refer  to  farms ;  to  think  that  the  land  question 
is  a  question  that  relates  entirely  to  farmers,  as  though 
land  had  no  other  use  than  growing  crops.  Now,  I  should 
like  to  know  how  a  man  could  even  edit  a  newspaper 
without  having  the  use  of  some  land.  He  might  swing 
himself  by  straps  and  go  up  in  a  balloon,  but  he  could  not 
even  then  get  along  without  land.  What  supports  the 
balloon  in  the  air?  Land;  the  surface  of  the  earth.  Let 
the  earth  drop,  and  what  would  become  of  the  balloon? 
The  air  that  supports  the  balloon  is  supported  in  turn 


The  Crime  of  Poverty  45 

by  land.  So  it  is  with  everything  else  men  can  do. 
Whether  a  man  is  working  away  three  thousand  feet 
under  the  surface  of  the  earth,  or  whether  he  is  working 
up  in  the  top  of  one  of  those  immense  buildings  they 
have  in  New  York,  whether  he  is  ploughing  the  soil  or 
sailing  across  the  ocean,  he  is  still  using  land. 

Land!  Why,  in  owning  a  piece  of  ground,  what  do 
you  own?  The  lawyers  will  tell  you  that  you  own  from 
the  center  of  the  earth  right  up  to  heaven ;  and,  so  far  as 
all  human  purposes  go,  you  do.  In  New  York  they  are 
building  houses  thirteen  and  fourteen  stories  high.  What 
are  men,  living  in  those  upper  stories,  paying  for? 
There  is  a  friend  of  mine  who  has  an  office  in  one  of 
them,  and  he  estimates  that  he  pays  by  the  cubic  foot 
for  air.  Well,  the  man  who  owns  the  surface  of  the  land 
has  the  renting  of  the  air  up  there,  and  would  have  if 
the  buildings  were  carried  up  for  miles. 

This  land  question  is  the  bottom  question.  Man  is  a 
land  animal.  Suppose  you  want  to  build  a  house;  can 
you  build  it  without  a  place  to  put  it?  What  is  it  built 
of?  Stone,  or  mortar,  or  wood,  or  iron — they  all  come 
from  the  earth.  Think  of  any  article  of  wealth  you 
choose,  any  of  those  things  which  men  struggle  for, 
where  do  they  come  from?  From  the  land.  It  is  the 
bottom  question. 

The  land  question  is  simply  the  labor  question;  and 
when  some  men  own  that  element  from  which  all  wealth 
must  be  drawn,  and  upon  which  all  must  live,  then  they 
have  the  power  of  living  without  work,  and  therefore, 
those  who  do  work  get  less  of  the  products  of  work. 

Did  you  ever  think  of  the  utter  absurdity  and  strange- 
ness of  the  fact  that,  all  over  the  civilized  world,  the 
working  classes  are  the  poor  classes?  Go  into  any  city 
in  the  world,  and  get  into  a  cab,  and  ask  the  man  to 
drive  you  where  the  working  people  live;  he  won't 


46  The   Crime  of  Poverty 

take  you  to  where  the  fine  houses  are;  he  will  take  you, 
on  the  contrary,  into  the  squalid  quarters,  the  poorer 
quarters.  Did  you  ever  think  how  curious  that  is? 
Think  for  a  moment  how  it  would  strike  a  rational  being 
who  had  never  been  on  the  earth  before,  if  such  an 
intelligence  could  come  down,  and  you  were  to  explain  to 
him  how  we  live  on  earth,  how  houses,  and  food  and 
clothing,  and  all  the  many  things  we  need  were  all  pro- 
duced by  work,  would  he  not  think  that  the  working 
people  would  be  the  people  who  lived  in  the  finest  houses 
and  had  most  of  everything  that  work  produces?  Yet, 
whether  you  took  him  to  London  or  Paris,  or  New  York, 
or  even  to  Burlington,  he  would  find  that  those  called 
working  people  were  the  people  who  lived  in  the  poorest 
houses. 

All  this  is  strange — just  think  of  it.  We  naturally 
despise  poverty;  and  it  is  reasonable  that  we  should.  I 
do  not  say — I  distinctly  repudiate  it — that  the  people  who 
are  poor  are  poor  always  from  their  own  fault,  or  even 
in  most  cases;  but  it  ought  to  be  so.  If  any  good  man 
or  woman  had  the  power  to  create  a  world,  it  would 
be  a  sort  of  a  world  in  which  no  one  would  be  poor  unless 
he  was  lazy  or  vicious.  But  that  is  just  precisely  the 
kind  of  a  world  that  this  is;  that  is  just  precisely  the 
kind  of  a  world  that  the  Creator  has  made.  Nature 
gives  to  lal  or,  and  to  labor  alone;  there  must  be  human 
work  before  any  article  of  wealth  can  be  produced;  and, 
in  the  natural  state  of  things  the  man  who  toiled  honestly 
and  well  would  be  the  rich  man,  and  he  who  did  not 
work  would  be  poor.  We  have  so  reversed  the  order 
of  nature,  that  we  are  accustomed  to  chink  of  the  working- 
man  as  a  poor  man. 

And  if  you  trace  it  out  I  believe  you  will  see  that  the 
primary  cause  of  this  is  that  we  compel  those  who  work 
to  pay  others  for  permission  to  do  so.  You  may  buy  a  coat, 


The  Crime  of  Poverty  47 

a  horse,  a  house ;  there  you  are  paying  the  seller  for  labor 
exerted,  for  something  that  he  has  produced,  or  that  he 
has  got  from  the  man  who  did  produce  it;  but  when  you 
pay  a  man  for  land,  what  are  you  paying  him  for?  You 
are  paying  for  something  that  no  man  has  produced;  you 
pay  him  for  something  that  was  here  before  man  was,  or 
for  a  value  that  was  created  not  by  him  individually,  but 
by  the  community  of  which  you  are  a  part.  What  is  the 
reason  that  the  land  here,  where  we  stand  tonight,  is 
worth  more  than  it  was  twenty-five  years  ago?  What  is 
the  reason  that  land  in  the  center  of  New  York,  that 
once  could  be  bought  by  the  mile  for  a  jug  of  whisky,  is 
now  worth  so  much  that,  though  you  were  to  cover  it  with 
gold,  you  would  not  have  its  value?  Is  it  not  because  of 
the  increase  of  population?  Take  away  that  population, 
and  where  would  the  value  of  the  land  be?  Look  at  it 
in  any  way  you  please. 

We  talk  about  over-production.  How  can  there  be 
such  a  thing  as  over-production  while  people  want?  All 
these  things  that  are  said  to  be  over-produced  are  desired 
by  many  people.  Why  do  they  not  get  them?  They  do 
not  get  them  because  they  have  not  the  means  to  buy 
them;  not  that  they  do  not  want  them.  Why  have  not 
they  the  means  to  buy  them  ?  They  earn  too  little.  When 
great  masses  of  men  have  to  work  for  an  average  of 
$1.40  a  day,  it  is  no  wonder  that  great  quantities  of  goods 
cannot  be  sold. 

Now,  why  is  it  that  men  have  to  work  for  such  low 
wages?  Because,  if  they  were  to  demand  higher  wages, 
there  are  plenty  of  unemployed  men  ready  to  step  into 
their  places.  It  is  this  mass  of  unemployed  men  who 
compel  that  fierce  competition  that  drives  wages  down 
to  the  point  of  bare  subsistence.  Why  is  it  that  there  are 
men  who  cannot  get  employment?  Did  you  ever  think 
what  a  strange  thing  it  is  that  men  cannot  find  employ- 


48  The   Crime  of  Poverty 

ment?  Adam  had  no  difficulty  in  finding  employment; 
neither  had  Robinson  Crusoe;  the  finding  of  employment 
was  the  last  thing  that  troubled  them. 

If  men  cannot  find  an  employer,  why  can  not  they 
employ  themselves?  Simply  because  they  are  shut  out 
from  the  element  on  which  human  labor  can  alone  be 
exerted.  Men  are  compelled  to  compete  with  each  other 
for  the  wages  of  an  employer,  because  they  have  been 
robbed  of  the  natural  opportunities  of  employing  them- 
selves; because  they  cannot  find  a  piece  of  God's  world 
on  which  to  work  without  paying  some  other  human 
creature  for  the  privilege. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that,  even  after  you  had  set 
right  this  fundamental  injustice,  there  would  not  be  many 
things  to  do ;  but  this  I  do  mean  to  say,  that  our  treatment 
of  land  lies  at  the  bottom  of  all  social  questions.  This  I 
do  mean  to  say,  that,  do  what  you  please,  reform  as  you 
may,  you  never  can  get  rid  of  widespread  poverty  so 
long  as  the  element  on  which,  and  from  which,  all  men 
must  live  is  made  the  private  property  of  some  men.  It 
is  utterly  impossible.  Reform  government — get  taxes 
down  to  the  minimum — build  railroads ;  institute  co-oper- 
ative stores;  divide  profits,  if  you  choose,  between  em- 
ployers and  employed — and  what  will  be  the  result?  The 
result  will  be  that  the  land  will  increase  in  value — that  will 
be  the  result — that  and  nothing  else.  Experience  shows 
this.  Do  not  all  improvements  simply  increase  the  value 
of  land — the  price  that  some  must  pay  others  for  the  priv- 
ilege of  living? 

Consider  the  matter.  I  say  it  with  all  reverence,  and  I 
merely  say  it  because  I  wish  to  impress  a  truth  upon  your 
minds — it  is  utterly  impossible,  so  long  as  His  laws  are 
what  they  are,  that  God  Himself  could  relieve  poverty — 
utterly  impossible.  Think  of  it,  and  you  will  see.  Men 
pray  to  the  Almighty  to  relieve  poverty.  But  poverty 


The  Crime  of  Poverty  49 

comes  not  from  God's  laws — it  is  blasphemy  of  the  worst 
kind  to  say  that;  it  comes  from  man's  injustice  to  his 
fellows.  Supposing  the  Almighty  were  to  hear  the 
prayer,  how  could  He  carry  out  the  request,  so  long  as 
His  laws  are  what  they  are?  Consider — the  Almighty 
gives  us  nothing  of  the  things  that  constitute  wealth; 
He  merely  gives  us  the  raw  material,  which  must  be 
utilized  by  man  to  produce  wealth.  Does  He  not  give  us 
enough  of  that  now?  How  could  He  relieve  poverty 
even  if  He  were  to  give  us  more?  Supposing,  in  answer 
to  these  prayers,  He  were  to  increase  the  power  of  the 
sun,  or  the  virtues  of  the  soil?  Supposing  He  were  to 
make  plants  more  prolific,  or  animals  to  produce  after 
their  kind  more  abundantly?  Who  would  get  the  benefit 
of  it?  Take  a  country  where  land  is  completely  monopo- 
lized, as  it  is  in  most  of  the  civilized  countries — who 
would  get  the  benefit  of  it?  Simply  the  landowners. 
And  even  if  God,  in  answer  to  prayer,  were  to  send  down 
out  of  the  heavens  those  things  that  men  require,  who 
would  get  the  benefit? 

In  the  Old  Testament  we  are  told  that,  when  the 
Israelites  journeyed  through  the  desert,  they  were  hun- 
gered, and  that  God  sent  down  out  of  the  heavens — 
manna.  There  was  enough  for  all  of  them,  and  they  all 
took  it  and  were  relieved.  But,  supposing  that  desert  had 
been  held  as  private  property,  as  the  soil  of  Great  Britain 
is  held;  as  the  soil  even  of  our  new  States  is  being  held. 
Suppose  that  one  of  the  Israelites  had  a  square  mile, 
and  another  one  had  twenty  square  miles,  and  another 
one  had  a  hundred  square  miles,  and  the  great  majority 
of  the  Israelites  did  not  have  enough  to  set  the  soles  of 
their  feet  upon,  which  they  could  call  their  own — what 
would  become  of  the  manna?  What  good  would  it  have 
done  to  the  majority?  Not  a  whit.  Though  God  had 
sent  down  manna  enough  for  all,  that  manna  would  have 


30  The   Crime  of  Poverty 

been  the  property  of  the  landholders;  they  would  have 
employed  some  of  the  others,  perhaps,  to  gather  it  up 
in  heaps  for  them,  and  would  have  sold  it  to  their  hungry 
brethren.  Consider  it:  this  purchase  and  sale  of  manna 
might  have  gone  on  until  the  majority  of  the  Israelites 
had  given  all  they  had,  even  to  the  clothes  off  their 
backs.  What  then?  Well,  then  they  would  not  have 
had  anything  left  with  which  to  buy  manna,  and  the 
consequences  would  have  been  that  while  they  went  hungry 
the  manna  would  have  lain  in  great  heaps,  and  the  land- 
owners would  have  been  complaining  about  the  over-pro- 
duction of  manna.  There  would  have  been  a  great  har- 
vest of  manna  and  hungry  people,  just  precisely  the  phe- 
nomenon that  we  see  today. 

I  cannot  go  over  all  the  points  I  would  like  to  try ;  but 
I  wish  to  call  your  attention  to  the  utter  absurdity  of 
private  property  in  land!  Why,  consider  it — the  idea 
of  a  man  selling  the  earth — the  earth,  our  common 
mother.  A  man  selling  that  which  no  man  produced 
A  man  passing  title  from  one  generation  to  another. 
Why,  it  is  the  most  absurd  thing  in  the  world.  Did  you 
ever  think  of  it?  What  right  has  a  dead  man  to  land? 
For  whom  was  this  earth  created?  It  was  created  for 
the  living,  certainly  not  for  the  dead.  Well,  now,  we 
treat  it  as  though  it  was  created  for  the  dead.  Where  do 
our  land  titles  come  from?  They  come  from  men  who, 
for  the  most  part,  are  passed  and  gone.  Here,  in  this 
new  country,  you  get  a  little  nearer  the  original  source; 
but  go  to  the  Eastern  States,  and  go  back  over  the  Atlan- 
tic. There  you  may  clearly  see  the  power  that  comes  from 
landownership. 

As  I  say,  the  man  that  owns  the  land  is  the  master 
of  those  who  must  live  on  it.  Here  is  a  modern  instance: 
you  who  are  familiar  with  the  history  of  the  Scottish 
Church  know  that  in  the  forties  there  was  a  disruption  in 


The  Crime  of  Poverty  51 

the  church.  You  who  have  read  Hugh  Miller's  work  on 
The  Cruise  of  the  Betsey  know  something  about  it;  how 
a  great  body,  led  by  Dr.  Chalmers,  came  out  from  the 
Established  Church  and  said  they  would  set  up  a  Free 
Church.  In  the  Established  Church  were  a  great  many 
of  the  landowners.  Some  of  them,  like  the  Duke  of 
Buccleugh,  owning  miles  and  miles  of  land  on  which  no 
common  Scotsman  had  a  right  to  put  his  foot  save  by 
the  Duke  of  Buccleugh's  permission.  These  landowners 
refused  not  only  to  allow  these  Free  Churchmen  to  have 
ground  upon  which  to  erect  a  church,  but  they  would 
not  let  them  stand  on  their  land  and  worship  God.  You 
who  have  read  The  Cruise  of  the  Betsey  know  that  it  is 
the  story  of  a  clergyman  who  was  obliged  to  make  his 
home  in  a  boat  on  the  wild  sea,  because  he  was  not 
allowed  to  have  land  enough  to  live  on.  In  many  places 
the  people  had  to  take  the  Sacrament  with  the  tide 
coming  to  their  knees — many  a  man  lost  his  life  worship- 
ping on  the  roads,  in  the  rain  and  snow.  They  were  not 
permitted  to  go  on  Mr.  Landlord's  land  and  worship 
God,  and  had  to  take  to  the  roads.  The  Duke  of  Buc- 
cleugh stood  out  for  seven  years,  compelling  people  to 
worship  in  the  roads,  until  finally  relenting  a  little,  he 
allowed  them  to  worship  God  in  a  gravel  pit;  whereupon 
they  passed  a  resolution  of  thanks  to  His  Grace- 
But  that  is  not  what  I  wanted  to  tell  you.  The  thing 
that  struck  me  was  this  significant  fact:  as  soon  as  the 
disruption  occurred  the  Free  Church,  composed  of  a 
great  many  able  men,  at  once  sent  a  delegation  to  the 
landlords  to  ask  permission  for  Scotsmen  to  worship  God 
in  Scotland  and  in  their  own  way.  This  delegation  set 
out  for  London — they  had  to  go  to  London,  England,  to 
get  permission  for  Scotsmen  to  worship  God  in  Scotland 
and  in  their  own  native  home ! 

But  that  is  not  the  most  absurd  thing.     In  one  place, 


52  The   Crime  of  Poverty 

where  they  were  refused  land  upon  which  to  stand  and 
worship  God,  the  late  landowner  had  died  and  his  estate 
was  in  the  hands  of  the  trustees,  and  the  answer  of  the 
trustees  was  that,  so  far  as  they  were  concerned,  they 
would  exceedingly  like  to  allow  them  to  have  a  place  to 
put  up  a  church  to  worship,  but  they  could  not  con- 
scientiously do  it,  because  they  knew  that  such  a  course 
would  be  very  displeasing  to  the  late  Mr.  Monaltie! 
Now,  this  dead  man  had  gone  to  heaven,  let  us  hope;  at 
any  rate  he  had  gone  away  from  this  world,  but,  lest  it 
might  displease  him,  men  yet  living  could  not  worship 
God.  Is  it  possible  for  absurdity  to  go  any  further? 

You  may  say  that  those  Scotch  people  are  very  ab- 
surd people,  but  they  are  not  a  whit  more  so  than  we 
are:  I  read  only  a  little  while  ago  of  some  Long  Island 
fishermen  who  had  been  paying  as  rent  for  the  privilege 
of  fishing  there,  a  certain  part  of  the  catch.  They  paid 
it  because  they  believed  that  James  II.,  a  dead  man  cen- 
turies ago,  a  man  who  never  put  his  foot  in  America,  a 
king  who  was  kicked  off  the  English  throne,  had  said 
they  had  to  pay  it,  and  they  got  up  a  committee,  went  to 
the  county  town  and  searched  the  records.  They  could 
not  find  anything  in  the  records  to  show  that  James  II. 
had  ever  ordered  that  they  should  give  any  of  their  fish 
to  anybody,  and  so  they  refused  to  pay  any  longer.  But 
if  they  had  found  that  James  II.  had  really  said  they 
should,  they  would  have  gone  on  paying.  Can  anything 
be  more  absurd? 

There  is  a  square  in  New  York — Stuyvesant  Square — 
that  is  locked  up  at  six  o'clock  every  evening,  even  on  the 
long  summer  evenings.  Why  is  it  locked  up  ?  Why  are  the 
children  not  allowed  to  play  there?  Why  because  old  Mr. 
Stuyvesant,  dead  and  gone  I  don't  know  how  many  years 
ago,  so  willed  it.  Now.  can  anything  be  more  absurd?* 


•  After   a    popular    agitation,    the    park   authorities    since    decided    to 
leave  the  gates  open  later  than  six  o'clock. 


The   Crime  of  Poverty  53 

Yet,  that  is-  not  any  more  absurd  than  our  land  titles. 
From  whom  do  they  come?  Dead  man  after  dead  man. 
Suppose  you  get  on  the  cars  here  going  to  Council  Bluffs 
or  Chicago.  You  find  a  passenger  with  his  baggage 
strewn  over  the  seats.  You  say,  "Will  you  give  me  a 
seat,  if  you  please,  sir?"  He  replies,  "No;  I  bought  this 
seat."  "Bought  this  seat?  From  whom  did  you  buy  it?" 
"I  bought  it  from  the  man  who  got  out  at  the  last  station." 
That  is  the  way  we  manage  this  earth  of  ours.  , 

Is  it  not  a  self-evident  truth,  as  Thomas  Jefferson 
said,  that  "the  land  belongs  in  usufruct  to  the  living," 
and  that  they  who  have  died  have  left  it,  and  have  no 
power  to  say  how  it  shall  be  disposed  af  ?  Title  to  land ! 
Where  can  a  man  get  any  title  which  makes  the  earth 
his  property? 

There  is  a  sacred  right  to  property — sacred  because 
ordained  by  the  laws  of  nature,  that  is  to  say,  by  the 
law  of  God,  and  necessary  to  social  order  and  civiliza- 
tion. That  is  the  right  of  property  in  things  produced 
by  labor;  it  rests  on  the  right  of  a  man  to  himself.  That 
which  a  man  produces,  that  is  his  against  all  the  world,  to 
give  or  to  keep,  to  lend,  to  sell  or  to  bequeath;  but  how 
can  he  get  such  a  right  to  land  when  it  was  here  before 
he  came?  Individual  claims  to  land  rest  only  on  appro- 
priation. I  read  in  a  recent  number  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  possibly  some  of  you  may  have  read  it,  an  article 
by  an  ex-Prime  Minister  of  Australia,  in  which  there  was 
a  little  story  that  attracted  my  attention.  It  was  of  a 
man  named  Galahard,  who,  in  the  early  days,  got  up  to 
the  top  of  a  high  hill  in  one  of  the  finest  parts  of  Western 
Australia.  He  got  up  there,  looked  all  around,  and  made 
this  proclamation:  "All  the  land  that  is  in  sight  from  the 
top  of  this  hill  I  claim  for  myself:  and  all  the  land  that 
is  out  of  sight  I  claim  for  my  son  John." 


54  The   Crime  of  Poverty 

That  story  is  of  universal  application.  Land  titles 
everywhere  come  from  just  such  appropriation.  Now, 
under  certain  circumstances,  appropriation  can  give  a 
right.  You  invite  a  company  of  gentlemen  to  dinner, 
and  you  say  to  them,  "Be  seated,  gentlemen,"  and  I  get 
into  this  chair.  Well,  that  seat,  for  the  time  being,  is 
mine  by  the  right  of  appropriation.  It  would  be  very 
ungentlemanly,  it  would  be  very  wrong,  for  any  one  of  the 
other  guests  to  come  up  and  say,  "Get  out  of  that  chair, 
I  want  to  sit  there !"  But  that  right  of  possession,  which 
is  good  so  far  as  the  chair  is  concerned  for  the  time, 
does  not  give  me  a  right  to  appropriate  all  there  is  on  the 
table  before  me.  Grant  that  a  man  has  a  right  to  appro- 
priate such  natural  elements  as  he  can  use,  has  he  any 
right  to  appropriate  more  than  he  can  use?  Has  a  guest, 
in  such  a  case  as  I  have  supposed,  a  right  to  appropriate 
more  than  he  needs,  and  make  other  people  stand  up? 
That  is  what  is  done. 

Why,  look  all  over  this  country — look  at  this  town 
or  any  other  town.  If  men  only  took  what  they  wanted 
to  use  we  should  all  have  enough;  but  they  take  what 
they  do  not  want  to  use  at  all.  Here  are  a  lot  of  English- 
men coming  over  here  and  getting  titles  to  our  land  in 
vast  tracts ;  what  do  they  want  with  our  land  ?  They  do 
not  want  it  at  all;  it  is  not  the  land  they  want;  they  have 
no  use  for  American  land.  What  they  want  is  the  income 
that  they  know  they  can  in  a  little  while  get  from  it. 
Where  does  that  income  come  from?  It  comes  from 
labor,  from  the  labor  of  American  citizens.  What  we  are 
selling  to  these  people  is  our  children,  not  land. 

Poverty?  Can  there  be  any  doubt  of  its  cause?  Go 
into  the  old  countries — go  into  western  Ireland,  into  the 
Highlands  of  Scotland;  these  are  purely  primitive  com- 
munities. There  you  will  find  people  as  poor  as  poor  can 
be — living  year  after  year  on  oatmeal  or  on  potatoes,  and 


The  Crime  of  Poverty  55 

often  going  hungry.  I  could  tell  you  many  a  pathetic 
story.  Speaking  to  a  Scottish  physician  who  was  telling 
me  how  this  diet  was  inducing  among  these  people  a 
disease  similar  to  that  which  from  the  same  cause  is 
ravaging  Italy  (the  Pellagra),  I  said  to  him:  "There  is 
plenty  of  fish;  why  don't  they  catch  fish?  There  is 
plenty  of  game.  I  know  the  laws  are  against  it,  but 
cannot  they  take  it  on  the  sly?"  "That,"  he  said,  "never 
enters  their  heads.  Why,  if  a  man  was  even  suspected 
of  having  a  taste  for  trout  or  grouse  he  would  have  to 
leave  at  once."  There  is  no  difficulty  in  discovering  what 
makes  those  people  poor.  They  have  no  right  to  any- 
thing that  nature  gives  them.  All  they  can  make  above 
a  living  they  must  pay  to  the  landlord.  They  not  only 
have  to  pay  for  the  land  that  they  use,  but  they  have  to 
pay  for  the  seaweed  that  comes  ashore  and  for  the  turf 
they  dig  from  the  bogs.  They  dare  not  improve,  for  any 
improvements  they  make  are  made  an  excuse  for  putting 
up  the  rent.  These  people  who  work  hard,  live  in  hovels, 
and  the  landlords,  who  do  not  work  at  all — oh !  they 
live  in  luxury  in  London  or  Paris.  If  they  have  hunting 
boxes  there,  why,  they  are  magnificent  castles  as  com- 
pared with  the  hovels  in  which  the  men  live  who  do  the 
work.  Is  there  any  question  as  to  the  cause  of  the  poverty 
there? 

Now,  go  into  the  cities,  and  what  do  you  see?  Why, 
you  see  even  a  lower  depth  of  poverty;  aye,  if  I  would 
point  out  the  worst  of  the  evils  of  land  monopoly  I  would 
not  take  you  to  Connemara ;  I  would  not  take  you  to  Skye 
or  Kintyre — I  would  take  you  to  Dublin,  or  Glasgow  or 
London.  There  is  something  worse  than  physical  de- 
privation, something  worse  than  starvation ;  and  that  is 
the  degradation  of  the  mind,  the  death  of  the  soul.  That 
is  what  you  will  find  in  those  cities. 


56  The   Crime  of  Poverty 

Now,  what  is  the  cause  of  that?  Why,  it  is  plainly 
to  be  seen;  the  people  driven  off  the  land  in  the  country 
are  driven  into  the  slums  of  the  cities.  For  every  man 
that  is  driven  off  the  land,  the  demand  for  the  produce 
of  the  workmen  of  the  cities  is  lessened;  and  the  man 
himself,  with  his  wife  and  children,  is  forced  among 
those  workmen  to  compete  upon  any  terms  for  a  bare 
living  and  force  wages  down.  Get  work  he  must  or 
starve — get  work  he  must,  or  do  that  which  those  people, 
so  long  as  they  maintain  their  manly  feelings,  dread  more 
than  death,  go  to  the  almshouse.  That  is  the  reason, 
here  as  in  Great  Britain,  that  the  cities  are  overcrowded. 
Open  the  land  that  is  locked  up,  that  is  held  by  dogs-in- 
the-manger,  who  will  not  use  it  themselves  and  will  not 
allow  anybody  else  to  use  it,  and  you  would  see  no  more 
of  tramps  and  hear  no  more  of  over-production. 

The  utter  absurdity  of  this  thing  of  private  property 
in  land !  I  defy  anyone  to  show  me  any  good  from  it, 
look  where  you  please.  Go  out  in  the  new  lands,  where 
my  attention  was  first  called  to  it,  or  go  to  the  heart  of 
the  capital  of  the  world — London.  Everywhere,  when 
your  eyes  are  once  opened,  you  will  see  its  inequality 
and  you  will  see  its  absurdity.  You  do  not  have  to  go 
farther  than  Burlington.  You  have  here  a  most  beautiful 
site  for  a  city,  but  the  city  itself,  as  compared  with  what 
it  might  be,  is  a  miserable,  straggling  town.  A  gentle- 
man showed  me  today  a  big  hole  alongside  one  of  your 
streets.  The  place  has  been  filled  up  all  around  it,  and 
this  hole  is  left.  It  is  neither  pretty  nor  useful.  Why 
does  that  hole  stay  there?  Well,  it  stays  there  because 
somebody  claims  it  as  his  private  property.  There  is  a 
man,  this  gentleman  told  me,  who  wished  to  grade  an- 
other lot,  and  wanted  somewhere  to  put  the  dirt  he  took 
off  it,  and  he  offered  to  buy  this  hole  so  that  he  might 
fill  it  up.  Now,  it  would  have  been  a  good  thing  for 


The   Crime  of  Poverty  57 

Burlington  to  have  it  filled  up,  a  good  thing  for  you  all — 
your  town  would  look  better,  and  you  yourself  would 
be  in  no  danger  of  tumbling  into  it  some  dark  night. 
Why,  my  friend  pointed  out  to  me  another  similar  hole 
in  which  water  had  collected  and  told  me  that  two 
children  had  been  drowned  there.  And  he  likewise  told 
me  that  a  drunken  man  some  years  ago  had  fallen  into 
such  a  hole,  and  had  brought  a  suit  against  the  city  which 
cost  you  taxpayers  some  $11,000.  Clearly  it  is  to  the 
interest  of  you  all  to  have  that  particular  hole  I  am 
talking  of  filled  up.  The  man  who  wanted  to  fill  it  up 
offered  the  hole-owner  $300.  But  the  hole-owner  refused 
the  offer,  and  declared  that  he  would  hold  out  until  he 
could  get  $1,000 ;  and,  in  the  meanwhile,  that  unsightly  and 
dangerous  hole  must  remain.  This  is  but  an  illustration  of 
private  property  in  land. 

You  may  see  the  same  thing  all  over  this  country. 
See  how  injuriously  in  the  agricultural  districts  this  thing 
of  private  property  in  land  affects  the  roads  and  the 
distances  between  the  people.  A  man  does  not  take  what 
land  he  wants,  what  he  can  use;  but  he  takes  all  he  can 
get,  and  the  consequence  is  that  his  next  neighbor  has 
to  go  further  along,  people  are  separated  from  each  other 
further  than  they  ought  to  be,  to  the  increased  difficulty 
of  production,  to  the  loss  of  neighborhood  and  compan- 
ionship. They  have  more  roads  to  maintain  than  they 
can  decently  maintain ;  they  must  do  more  work  to  get  the 
same  result,  and  life  is  in  every  way  harder  and  drearier. 

When  you  come  to  the  cities,  it  is  just  the  other  way. 
In  the  country  the  people  are  too  much  scattered;  in  the 
great  cities  they  are  too  crowded.  Go  to  a  city  like 
New  York,  and  there  they  are  jammed  together  like 
sardines  in  a  box,  living  family  upon  family,  one  above 
the  other.  It  is  an  utterly  unnatural  and  unwholesome 
life.  How  can  you  have  anything  like  a  home  in  a  tene- 


58  The   Crime  of  Poverty 

ment  room  or  two  or  three  rooms?  How  can  children  be 
brought  up  healthily  with  no  place  to  play  ?  Two  or  three 
weeks  ago  I  read  of  a  New  York  judge  who  fined  two  little 
boys  five  dollars  for  playing  hop-scotch  on  the  street — 
where  else  could  they  play  ?  Private  property  in  land  had 
robbed  them  of  all  place  to  play.  Even  a  temperance 
man,  who  had  investigated  the  subject,  said  that  in  his 
opinion  the  gin  palaces  of  London  were  a  positive  good  in 
this,  that  they  enabled  the  people  whose  abodes  were  dark 
and  squalid  rooms  to  see  a  little  brightness,  and  thus  pre- 
vent them  from  going  wholly  mad. 

What  is  the  reason  for  this  overcrowding  of  cities? 
There  is  no  natural  reason.  Take  New  York,  one-half 
its  area  is  not  built  upon.  Why,  then,  must  people 
crowd  together  as  they  do  there?  Simply  because  of 
private  ownership  of  land.  There  is  plenty  of  room  to 
build  houses,  and  plenty  of  people  who  want  to  build 
houses,  but  before  anybody  can  build  a  house  a  blackmail 
price  must  be  paid  to  some  dog-in-the-manger.  It  costs, 
in  many  cases,  more  to  get  vacant  ground  upon  which 
to  build  a  house  than  it  does  to  build  the  house.  And  then 
what  happens  to  the  man  who  pays  this  blackmail  and 
builds  a  house?  Down  comes  the  tax-gatherer  and  fines 
him  for  building  the  house. 

It  is  so  all  over  the  United  States — the  men  who 
improve,  the  men  who  turn  the  prairie  into  farms,  and 
the  desert  into  gardens,  the  men  who  beautify  your 
cities,  are  taxed  and  fined  for  having  done  these  things. 
Now,  nothing  is  clearer  -than  that  the  people  of  New 
York  want  more  houses;  and  I  think  that  even  here  in 
Burlington  you  could  get  along  with  more  houses.  Why, 
then,  should  you  fine  a  man  who  builds  one?  Look  all 
over  this  country — the  bulk  of  the  taxation  rests  upon 
the  imprcner;  the  man  who  puts  up  a  building  or  estab- 
lishes a  factory,  or  cultivates  a  farm,  he  is  taxed  for  it; 


The   Crime   of  Poverty  59 

and  not  merely  taxed  for  it,  but  I  think,  in  nine  cases  out 
of  ten,  the  land  which  he  uses,  the  bare  land,  is  taxed 
more  than  the  adjoining  lot,  or  the  adjoining  160  acres 
that  some  speculator  is  holding  as  a  mere  dog-in-the- 
manger,  not  using  it  himself,  and  not  allowing  anybody 
else  to  use  it. 

I  am  talking  too  long;  but  let  me,  in  a  few  words, 
point  out  the  way  of  getting  rid  of  land  monopoly,  secur- 
ing the  right  of  all  to  the  elements  which  are  necessary 
for  life.  We  could  not  divide  the  land.  In  a  rude  state 
of  society,  as  among  the  ancient  Hebrews,  giving  each 
family  its  lot,  and  making  it  inalienable,  we  might  secure 
something  like  equality.  But  in  a  complex  civilization 
that  will  not  suffice.  It  is  not,  however,  necessary  to 
divide  up  the  land.  All  that  is  necessary  is  to  divide 
up  the  income  that  comes  from  the  land.  In  that  way 
we  can  secure  absolute  equality;  nor  could  the  adoption 
of  this  principle  involve  any  rude  shock  or  violent  change. 
It  can  be  brought  about  gradually  and  easily  by  abolish- 
ing taxes  that  now  rest  upon  capital,  labor,  and  im- 
provements, and  raising  all  our  public  revenues  by  the 
taxation  of  land  values;  and  the  longer  you  think  of  it 
the  clearer  you  will  see  that  in  every  possible  way  will  it 
be  a  benefit. 

Now,  supposing  we  should  abolish  all  other  taxes 
direct  and  indirect,  substituting  for  them  a  tax  upon 
land  values,  what  would  be  the  effect?  In  the  first  place 
it  would  be  to  kill  speculative  values.  It  would  be  to 
remove  from  the  newer  parts  of  the  country  the  bulk  of 
the  taxation,  and  put  it  on  the  richer  parts.  It  would  be 
to  exempt  the  pioneer  from  taxation,  and  make  the  larger 
cities  pay  more  of  it.  It  would  be  to  relieve  energy  and 
enterprise,  capital  and  labor,  from  all  those  burdens  that 
now  bear  upon  them.  What  a  start  that  would  give  to 
production !  In  the  second  place,  we  could,  from  the 


60  The   Crime   of  Poverty 

value  of  land,  not  merely  pay  all  the  present  expenses 
of  the  government,  but  we  could  do  infinitely  more.  In  the 
city  of  San  Francisco,  James  Lick  left  a  few  blocks  of 
ground  to  be  used  for  public  purposes  there,  and  the 
rent  amounts  to  so  much,  that  out  of  it  will  be  built  the 
largest  telescope  in  the  world,  large  public  baths,  and 
other  public  buildings,  and  various  costly  works.  If, 
instead  of  these  few  blocks,  the  whole  value  of  the  land 
upon  which  the  city  is  built  had  accrued  to  San  Fran- 
cisco, what  could  she  not  do  ? 

So  in  this  little  town,  where  land  values  are  very 
low  as  compared  with  such  cities  as  Chicago  and  San 
Francisco,  you  could  do  many  things  for  mutual  benefit 
and  public  improvement  did  you  appropriate  to  public 
purposes  the  land  values  that  now  go  to  individuals. 
You  could  have  a  great  free  library ;  you  could  have  an 
art  gallery;  you  could  get  yourselves  a  public  park,  a 
magnificent  public  park,  too.  You  have  here  one  of  the 
finest  natural  sites  for  a  beautiful  town  that  I  know  of, 
and  I  have  traveled  much.  You  might  make  on  this  site 
a  city  that  it  would  be  a  pleasure  to  live  in.  You  will 
not,  as  you  go  now — oh !  no !  Why,  the  very  fact  that 
you  have  a  magnificent  view  here  will  cause  somebody 
to  hold  on  all  the  more  tightly  to  the  land  that  commands 
this  view,  and  charge  higher  prices  for  it.  The  State  of 
New  York  wants  to  buy  a  strip  of  land  so  as  to  enable 
the  people  to  see  Niagara,  but  what  a  price  she  must 
pay  for  it.  Look  at  all  the  great  cities;  in  Philadelphia, 
for  instance,  in  order  to  build  their  great  city  hall  they 
had  to  block  up  the  only  two  wide  streets  they  had  in  the 
city.  Everywhere  you  go  you  may  see  how  private  prop- 
erty in  land  prevents  public  as  well  as  private  improvement. 

But  I  have  no  time  to  enter  further  into  details.  I 
can  only  ask  you  to  think  upon  this  thing,  and  the  more 
you  will  see  its  desirability.  As  an  English  friend  of 


The   Crime   of  Poverty  61 

mine  puts  it,  "No  taxes  and  a  pension  for  everybody;" 
and  why  should  it  not  be  ?  To  take  land  values  for  public 
purposes  is  not  really  to  impose  a  tax,  but  to  take  for 
public  purposes  a  value  created  by  the  community.  And 
out  of  the  fund  which  would  thus  accrue  from  the  com- 
mon property,  we  might,  without  degradation  to  anybody, 
provide  enough  to  actually  secure  from  want  all  who  were 
deprived  of  their  natural  protectors,  or  met  with  accident ; 
or  any  man  who  should  grow  so  old  that  he  could  not 
work.  All  prating  that  is  heard  from  some  quarters  about 
its  hurting  the  common  people  to  give  them  what  they  do 
not  work  for  is  humbug.  The  truth  is,  that  anything  that 
injures  self-respect,  degrades,  does  harm;  but  if  you  give 
it  as  a  right,  as  something  to  which  every  citizen  is  enti- 
tled to,  it  does  not  degrade.  Charity  schools  do  degrade 
children  that  are  sent  to  them,  but  public  schools  do  not. 

But  all  such  benefits  as  these,  while  great,  would  be 
incidental.  The  great  thing  would  be  that  the  reform  I 
propose  would  tend  to  open  opportunities  to  labor  and 
enable  men  to  provide  employment  for  themselves.  That 
is  the  great  advantage.  We  should  gain  the  enormous 
productive  power  that  is  going  to  waste  all  over  the  coun- 
try, the  power  of  idle  hands  that  would  gladly  be  at  work. 
And  that  removed,  then  you  would  see  wages  begin  to 
mount.  It  is  not  that  everyone  would  turn  farmer,  or 
everyone  build  himself  a  house  if  he  had  an  opportunity 
for  doing  so,  but  so  many  could,  and  would,  as  to  relieve 
the  pressure  on  the  labor  market  and  provide  employment 
for  all  others.  And  as  wages  mounted  to  the  higher  levels 
then  you  would  see  the  productive  power  increased.  The 
country  where  wages  are  high  is  the  country  of  greatest 
productive  power.  Where  wages  are  highest  there  will 
invention  be  most  active;  there  will  labor  be  most  intelli- 
gent; there  will  be  the  greatest  yield  for  the  expenditure 
of  exertion.  The  more  you  think  of  it  the  more  clearly 


62  The   Crime   of  Poverty 

you  will  see  that  what  I  say  is  true.  I  cannot  hope  to  con- 
vince you  in  talking  for  an  hour  or  two,  but  I  shall  be 
content  if  I  shall  put  you  upon  inquiry.  Think  for  your- 
selves; ask  yourselves  whether  this  widespread  fact  of 
poverty  is  not  a  crime,  and  a  crime  for  which  everyone  of 
us,  man  and  woman,  who  does  not  do  what  he  or  she  can 
do  to  call  attention  to  it  and  to  do  away  with  it,  is  re- 
sponsible. 


18034 


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